What Does Dunce Mean?

According to the dictionary a dunce is described as a dull-witted, stupid, or ignorant person. This means that whoever you refer this to is not the sharpest tool in the box and is considered to be dim, slow witted and not particularly intelligent and does not possess the ability to develop their intellect because they cannot function as well as smart people.
Back around fifty or even sixty years ago in school people would take the mickey our of pupils or their fellow students and make a large cone shaped hat that they would write a big capital d on. This represented the word dunce and people would make the person who was let's say less intelligent to wear it on their head for a period of time.
It is particularly offensive because dunce has a number of other meanings including being a stupid person. You must take into consideration who you are aiming this word at because it may cause a tremendous amount of offence at who you are aiming it at. If you feel that someone else is less intelligent that you or someone who does things in a stupid way may have a number of things wrong with them. They could have ailments including autism or ADD. This term is called Attention Deficit Disorder and means that the child whoever it is tends to be more hyperactive and cannot focus on doing things. This means that their education or intelligence suffers because it interrupts with their learning.
So dunce can take on a number of meanings and has several underlying factors that could mean that person may on the surface be acting in a stupid manner but there may be reason as to why they are doing this.

The word 'dunce' is used especially for a child and is used only for the kind of child who is slow to learn and acts like a stupid person. But these days the word is not in use very often and when somebody uses it people call him an old fashioned person.
You can often hear the term stupid instead of the abovementioned one as with stupid the parson can convey his thought about anybody irrespective of the age.

If a generalized term is available for an idea why take trouble to use a specific one as using specific terms takes ample knowledge of the language and these days hardly people care about these subtleties about any language. So be happy with the general term rather than using a specific one.

Typically 'dunce' refers to a person of low intelligence...♥nassy