nincompoop
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
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.
Inflected forms:
form: nincompoops
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: nickumpoop
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: nicompoop
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: nincumpoop
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: A foolish or silly person.
pos: noun
tags: derogatory
examples: 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].
Yes, you Nicompoop, you are a pretty Fellow to pleaſe a Woman indeed.
Mous[trappa]. O you huffing Son of a Whore. / Drink[allup]. You rotten Jack in a box. / Bean[tosser]. You foul mouth'd Nickumpoop.
’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.
Oh, thou Dromedary, thou Founder'd Mule, without a Pack-ſaddle; or what other foul Beaſt ſhall I call thee, for Man thou art not, nor haſt not been to me, Heaven knows the time when? Art not thou aſham'd to ſee me, thou Nincompoop?
May'ſt thou paſs for a Nincumpoop all the World over, / From Paris to France, and from England to Dover.
[S]hall I be call'd as many blockheads, numſculs, doddypoles, dunderheads, ninnyhammers, gooſecaps, joltheads, nicompoops, and ſh--t-a-beds—and other unſavory appellations, […]
Nickumpoop, or Nincumpoop, a fooliſh fellow; alſo one who never ſaw his wife's ****.
[H]ad he dropped it [a hat] like a gooſe—like a puppy—like an aſs—or in doing it, or even after he had done, had he looked like a fool,—like a ninny—like a nicompoop—it had failed, and the effects upon the heart had been loſt.
What, do you give it up so? you poor, ſpiritleſs nincumpoops! I would roar till I burſted firſt, before I would give it up so to such a low-liv'd, beggarly rabble.
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, both in France and in England.
These epics nearly always had runaway trains, nincompoops floundering with the controls and a collapsed bridge just ahead!
Because of this situation, you find the idlers, the never-do-wells, the nicompoops, the unqualified and the misfits these days getting on better in life than their hardworking colleagues.
Production failures, screw-ups, and faulty service aren't usually the fault of the supposed nincompoops with whom we're dealing but instead the Nincompoopery—i.e., the meta-foolishness—of the companies and systems in which they're forced to work. Ill-planned, outdated, or ludicrous organizational structures can turn even the most eager employee into a nincompoop, or at least force him or her to seem like one.
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