dunsman

Updated: May 17, 2025

Thus it came to pass that many times an adherent of the old learning would seek to strengthen his position by an appeal to its famous doctor, familiarly called Duns; while those of the new learning would contemptuously rejoin, 'Oh, you are a Dunsman' or more briefly, 'You are a Duns, or, 'This is a piece of duncery'; and inasmuch as the new learning was ever enlisting more and more of the genius and scholarship of the age on its side, the title became more and more a term of scorn.

Richard Chenevix Trench - On the Study of Words