dolt

   A dolt is a dull person, a blockhead. The word has been in use since at least the sixteenth century, and was thus available to Shakespeare. He has Pandarus, in Troilus and Cressida, refer to the ‘asses, fools, dolts’, meaning the ordinary soldiers who are passing by who cannot compare with Troilus.

   More tellingly, in Othello, Emilia learns that Othello has killed Desdemona and tells him: ‘O gull! O dolt! As ignorant as dirt! Thou hast done a deed.’ A modern example of ‘dolt’, used as a disguised endearment, occurs in The Word Child, by Iris Murdoch: ‘“I want your ‘flu. I want you. I love you viruses and all.” She kissed me on the lips. “You dolt, Tomkins.”’ In Vera Caspary’s novel Laura a man addresses a shopkeeper he knows well: ‘Claudius, you dolt, why in the sacred name of Josiah Wedgwood have you been keeping this [a vase] from me?’ Leslie Thomas, in The Magic Army, has ‘Clear off, you dozy dolts’ addressed to a herd of cows blocking the road. Later in the novel a woman says: ‘Come on, you old dolt’ to her chauffeur.