Noun

(en noun)

A silly or foolish person.

* {{quote-book

, year=1680 , author=Matthew Stevenson , title=The wits paraphras'd: or, Paraphrase upon paraphrase: In a burlesque on the several late translations of Ovids Epistles ... citation , page=161 , passage=Tis such another Nincompoop ,
I sleep, and he begins to droop.
He sees, yet keeps his Eyes a winking,
Says nought, but pays it off with thinking. }}

* {{quote-book

, year=1694 , author=Thomas D'Urfey , title=The Comical History of Don Quixote: As it was Acted at the Queen's Theatre in Dorset-Garden ... , chapter=Part I, Act I, Scene I citation , page=6 , passage=...Heaven knows the time when? Art not thou asham’d to see me, thou Nincompoop ? }}

* 1905: Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-pubeng?specfile=/texts/english/modeng/publicsearch/modengpub.o2w&act=surround&offset=507211157&tag=Orczy,+Baroness:+The+Scarlet+Pimpernel,+1905&query=+nincompoop&id=OrcPimp]

No wonder that Chauvelin's spies had failed to detect, in the apparently brainless nincompoop , the man whose reckless daring and resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest French spies...

Noun

(en noun)

(pejorative) A dunce, mentally dull or stupid person.

(pejorative) A label for a person who refuses to learn or grow mentally.

That numskull will never learn how to compose a letter.

A traditional name for a fool who serves as the butt of jokes about stupidity.