noun, slang ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A person who cannot hear clearly or who fails to pay attention to what is said. Its origin is in the wool and cotton mills of Northern England where the noise of the machinery and build-up of cotton dust made it difficult to hear people speaking. The earliest example in print is UK, dated, derogatory, informal

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.