dunceryn.

1567 T. Drant tr. Horace Pistles in tr. Horace Arte of Poetrie sig. Gv^v Better speach, the clottred clotte Of duncerie brought to nowght [L. grave virus munditiae pepulere].

a1577 T. Smith Orations Queens Marriage iv, in J. Strype Life T. Smith (1698) App. iii. 82 Here you come with your fine and logical Distinction..as tho' we were in a School of Dunsery.

1641 J. Milton Reason Church-govt. 40 Prelaty, under whose inquisitorius and tyrannical duncery no free and splendid wit can flourish.

1687 T. Brown Reflect. Hind & Panther in M. Clifford Notes upon Dryden's Poems 29 The Author of Pax Vobis..your Brother in Scholastick Duncery.

1615 E. Hoby Curry-combe i. 17 He shewed more foolery then Philosophy, more Dunsery then Diuinity.

1683 T. Tenison Disc. conc. Guide in Matters of Faith 23 There have been other Popes, also, injudicious even to duncery.

1715 H. Prideaux Articles Reform. Univ. xxiv, in Life H. Prideaux (1748) 216 To the discouragement of learning, and the encouragement of duncery and idleness.

1779 E. Wolff En Dansk og Engelsk Ord-bog at Dumhed A dulness, dumpishness, duncery, stupidity.

1892 R. H. Stoddard Under Evening Lamp 139 Discovering this last delinquency, beside which his duncery was nothing, his irate parent concluded to make him an ironmonger, like himself.

1910 N. Amer. Rev. May 619 No imaginable student above the lowest level of brainless and frontless duncery will care.

2007 A. Theroux Laura Warholic xxviii. 405 It was a decade of just plain duncery.

1839 Satirist 27 Jan. 30/3 Fraser's polemics and the poetry of Po, are gems of duncery!

1881 A. C. Swinburne in Fortn. Rev. Feb. 151 The detestable duncery of sham Pindarics.

1974 H. E. Toliver Animate Illusions i. 34 As the ultimate in duncery, Pope's ‘Goddess of the city’ yawns a conclusive yawn.

2005 R. Ballaster Fabulous Orients iv. 222 The embodiment of female duncery in Pope's poem, Haywood.