blockhead

• block head, block-head

1532, block (noun) +‎ -head.

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blockhead (plural blockheads)

1. (colloquial) A stupid person.
   • 1764 December 24 (indicated as 1765), Onuphrio Muralto, translated by William Marshal [pseudonyms; Horace Walpole], chapter I, in The Castle of Otranto, , London: Tho Lownds , →OCLC, page 35:

     [S]o I think, blockheads, ſaid Manfred; what is it has ſcared you thus?

   • 1819, William Hazlitt, “A Letter to William Gifford, Esq.”, in A. R. Waller, Arnold Glover, editors, The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, volume 1, London: J. M. Dent & Co., published 1902, page 368:

     […] like a conceited mechanic in a village ale-house, you would set down every one who differs from you as an ignorant blockhead […]

   • 1953, Charles Schulz, Peanuts:

     "What a blockhead that Charlie Brown is!"

   • 2008, Philip Roth, Indignation:

     Not all of them, by no means anywhere close to all of them, just the most notable blockheads among them — three altogether, two freshmen and one sophomore, all of whom were among the first to be expelled the next day — masturbated into pairs of stolen panties […]

2. A sideshow performer who hammers nails or similar items through his or her nostril into the nasal cavity; a human blockhead.
   • 2005, Brian M. Wiprud, Stuffed, →ISBN, page 262:

     Waldo was sent that from an elderly blockhead named Fuzzy in Gibtown, Florida. That's the town to which most freaks retire.

   • 2014, Louis J. Parascandola, John Parascandola -, A Coney Island Reader: Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion, →ISBN, page 306:

     He is a classic sideshow performer, entertaining crowds with feats such as sword swallowing, fire-eating, and chainsaw juggling. His specialty, however, is the human blockhead act, hammering six-inch nails up his nostrils.

   • 2016, M. Chemers, Staging Stigma: A Critical Examination of the American Freak Show, →ISBN:

     Burkhardt was a legendary figure in the sideshow world, a mentor and instructor to a new generation of blockheads and other working acts who now train in private classes at Coney Island USA's Sideshow School with Burkhardt's disciple Todd Robbins (Zigun 2006).

• See also Thesaurus:idiot

blockhead (third-person singular simple present blockheads, present participle blockheading, simple past and past participle blockheaded)

1. To perform as a human blockhead.
   • 2007, Frank Cullen, Florence Hackman, Donald McNeilly, Vaudeville old & new: an encyclopedia of variety performances in America, →ISBN:

     Like an old-time sideshow, the acts included lying on a bed of nails, blockheading and, of course, fire-eating.

2. (rare) To behave in a stupid manner.
   • 1804, The Spirit of the Public Journals:

     Two years' blockading made fair Malta ours: A noble struggle! -- yet 't is thought (at Rading) That Britain's island shews superior pow'rs, To bear, and to survive, two years blockheading !

   • 1856, John Adams, The works of John Adams, second President of the United States, →ISBN:

     I have blockheading and boxing enough at Master Lovell's, I won't have it repeated here; and in a great passion, I threw the Virgil at his head, hit him in the face, and bruised his lip, and ran away.

   • 1958, The Ethical Outlook: A Journal of the American Ethical Union:

     The operation of blockheading is much the same as that of beheading, which Charles I underwent. In both the head is severed from the body. The body goes around without benefit of head. The victim becomes a Headless Horseman, or that more common figure a Headless Pedestrian. In our day the operation is often done not on an executioner's block but on Paradise Avenue in Suburbia Manor.

• headblock