English edit

Etymology edit

be- +‎ dunce

Verb edit

bedunce (third-person singular simple present bedunces, present participle beduncing, simple past and past participle bedunced)

  1. (transitive, archaic, rare) To treat as, or reduce to, a dunce; to make stupid.
    • 1866, Oliver Goldsmith, The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, page 515:
      After he has sufficiently bedunced us through several pages, he at last has the tenderness to answer to our particular objections, and that with sufficient perplexity.
    • 1843, Catherine Grace Frances Gore, The Birthright, page 98:
      [] reamsful of financial or statistical calculations; the figures of which, when duly emitted in the House, sufficed to bedunce the brains of five hundred wiser men; []