lunkhead

noun

lunk·​head ˈləŋk-ˌhed 

variants or lunk

ˈləŋk 

plural lunkheads or lunks

: a stupid or dull-witted person : dolt

"Where I lived, in Central Square, Cambridge, you had the working class and the university life—you'd have to be a lunkhead not to be keenly aware of it," says [Ben] Affleck.

—Steven Daly

[Bruce] Willis played the lunk who ran a down-and-out detective agency that came to life when model Cybill Shepherd became his partner.

—Stephen Dubner

In the onscreen romance department, actress Shelley Fabares has seen her share of hunks and lunks.

—Cynthia Sanz and John Griffiths

Synonyms

• airhead
• birdbrain
• blockhead
• bonehead
• bubblehead
• chowderhead
• chucklehead
• clodpoll
• clodpole
• clot [British]
• cluck
• clunk
• cretin
• cuddy [British dialect]
• cuddie
• deadhead
• dim bulb [slang]
• dimwit
• dip
• dodo
• dolt
• donkey
• doofus [slang]
• dope
• dork [slang]
• dullard
• dum-dum
• dumbbell
• dumbhead
• dummkopf
• dummy
• dunce
• dunderhead
• fathead
• gander
• golem
• goof
• goon
• half-wit
• hammerhead
• hardhead
• idiot
• ignoramus
• imbecile
• jackass
• know-nothing
• knucklehead
• lamebrain
• loggerhead [chiefly dialect]
• loon
• lump
• meathead
• mome [archaic]
• moron
• mug [chiefly British]
• mutt
• natural
• nimrod [slang]
• nincompoop
• ninny
• ninnyhammer
• nit [chiefly British]
• nitwit
• noddy
• noodle
• numskull
• numbskull
• oaf
• pinhead
• prat [British]
• ratbag [chiefly Australian]
• saphead
• schlub [slang]
• shlub
• schnook [slang]
• simpleton
• stock
• stupe
• stupid
• thickhead
• turkey
• woodenhead
• yahoo
• yo-yo

Examples of lunkhead in a Sentence

don't let that lunkhead anywhere near your work tools

Recent Examples on the Web

However, her lovable lunkhead of a servant, Kronk (Patrick Warburton), gives the emperor the wrong vial of poison and turns him into a llama. —Devin Nealy, EW.com, 16 Oct. 2023

Their rowdy energy is so willfully disreputable, they must be made by a bunch of know-nothing lunkheads. —Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 29 Dec. 2023

Except an elderly Russian gangster recognizes the fiftysomething comic as the young American lunkhead (American Vandal‘s Jimmy Tatro) who stole his precious pocket watch all those years ago. —David Fear, Rolling Stone, 4 June 2023

For this week at the PGA championship, the same goes for every lunkhead who snapped a photo in the middle of a backswing, every 50-year-old who crowded out a kid in an autograph line, every scampering porta-potty seeker who incurred the wrath of an over-officious caddie. —Eddie Pells, Star Tribune, 6 Aug. 2020

The character was not a hothead but a himbo, a Presidential lunkhead. —Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2022

The walls are booklined: Charlie is no lunkhead but an avid reader. —Joshua Rothkopf, EW.com, 21 Dec. 2021

The fun throughout, the payoff, is in seeing Beth yank the rug out from one misunderestimating lunkhead and authority figure after another. —Tribune News Service, cleveland, 2 Nov. 2020

Word History

Etymology

probably alteration of lump + head

First Known Use

1851, in the meaning defined above