Lunkhead

The other day I was trying to look up some ly- word in the AHD, and as my eyes were skimming over the pages I saw "lunkhead". Laughing to myself, I decided that I had to know what this word was. As it turns out, lunkhead is just another slang word for a "stupid person", or as they put it, "a dolt". The AHD doesn't give any etymology on this particular slang, but it does tell us that it is probably a mix of "lump" and "head".

Following this new lead, I found that lump comes from Middle English, lumpe, although that is derived from Low German (it doesn't tell us which word). And head, comes from Old English, heafod.

The only problem with this is the story. How does lump head come to be lunkhead, a dumb person? Oddly enough, I can't find the story anywhere online. The OED has virtually no information on it, other than that it first appeared in 1884 in Mark Twain's Huck Finn. And just because I love this quote so much, this is where we'll end our search for lunkhead...

"So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare."

All info taken from AHD or OED.