1 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2024
    1. Evenbefore his betrayal, though, he felt little identification with the colonists,writing that North Carolinians were the most “cowardly Blockheads[another word for lubber] that ever God created & must be used likenegro[e]s if you expect any good of them.”29

      blockheads as a synonym for lubber

      This gives new meaning to the use of "blockhead" in Charles Schultz' Peanuts (usually Lucy in reference to Charlie Brown).

      Recall Samuel Johnson's (1709-1784) aphorism:

      “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”


      Definition from Webster's Dictionary (1913):

      Block"head` (?), n. [Block + head.] A stupid fellow; a dolt; a person deficient in understanding.

      "The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head." —Pope.