This is Origins in Five. Five minutes, one word, a small story to start the day. Today's word is dunce. First of all, it's worth mentioning that the word dunce is not as common today as it was even ten or twenty years ago. Thus, some of our younger listeners may not have heard about it. It's fair to say that dunce is a mean thing to call someone. It usually means that you consider them slow, foolish, or bad at learning. In fact, when people think of the word dunce, they usually think of the term dunce cap. For many of our older listeners, a dunce cap conjures up images of a slow learner sitting in the corner of a classroom or on a stool. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the strange part of this word. It actually comes from a man who is considered brilliant. His name was John Dunn's DUNS SCOTIS. He lived around the late 1200s and early thirteen hundreds and was one of the great medieval scholars of Europe. He was a Scottish Franciscan friar and was famous for his incredibly subtle and complex arguments. He was a philosopher, an academic, a teacher, someone who today we may call an all around Renaissance man. In a moment you'll see why that label is a bit ironic. Interesting, his followers admired him so much that they gave him a nickname, the subtle doctor. Not exactly the resume or title of someone whose name eventually would become an insult. So what happened? Well, after John Dunn Scotus died, Europe began to change. During the Renaissance new scholars started rejecting many older medieval methods of thinking. These Renaissance scholars preferred clearer writing, classical literature, and newer approaches to science and philosophy. But not everyone was on board with this. There were followers of John Dunscotus called Dunsmen, who continued to defend the older traditions. Their critics thought that these dunsmen were overly technical, stubborn, and hopelessly outdated. They did not adjust with the times. And slowly the word duns started changing meaning. What began as the name of a respected scholar and his followers later became shorthand for someone seen as intellectually behind the times. By the 1500s and sixteen hundreds the spelling changed to Dunce D U N C E and the word had evolved into a full blown insult meaning a slow learner or fool. So the word completely flipped. A name once associated with intellectual brilliance became a synonym for stupidity. And then came the Dunce Cap. Schools in later centuries, especially during the Victorian period, so around the mid eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, sometimes forced struggling students to wear pointed hats as punishment or humiliation. Ironically, some historians think the shape may have been loosely inspired by medieval scholars' hats. So even this symbol of foolishness may trace back to the John Dunn SCOTIS era, which in many ways makes the whole story even sadder. Dun Scotus spent his life building a reputation as one of Europe's greatest thinkers, only for his name to become the opposite of intelligence. And that's Origins in Five. One word, one story to start your day,