Nincompoop
noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A foolish or silly person. derogatory
"The Ship of Fools Fully Fraught and Richly Laden with Asses, Fools, Jack-daws, Ninnihammers, Coxcombs, Slender-wits, Shallowbrains, Paper-Skuls, Simpletons, Nickumpoops, Wiseakers, Dunces, and Blockheads. Declaring their several Natures, Manners, and Constitutions; the occasion why this Ship was built, with the places of their intended Voyage, and a lift of the Officers that bear Command therein [book title]."
- 2 a stupid foolish person wordnet
Example
More examples"A former Reagan speechwriter called Sarah Palin "an ignorant nincompoop" after she referred to the late president's role in a movie that had co-starred a chimpanzee."
Etymology
Uncertain; the first element nincom- is possibly from the name Nicholas or Nicodemus (compare French nicodème (“foolish or gullible person”), from the Pharisee named Nicodemus mentioned in the Bible who asks Jesus seemingly naive questions: see John 3:1–21), or from ninny (“foolish or silly person”), while the second element -poop could be derived from poop (“(obsolete) to cheat, deceive, fool”). The English lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) suggested that the first element might be from Latin non compos (mentis) (“not of sound mind”), but the Oxford English Dictionary notes that this does not correspond with early forms of the word from the 16th century such as nickumpoop and nicompoop.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.