A dolt is a stupid person. A complete dolt, some dolt in a car, called him a dolt.
It is old-fashioned and mild, which is why it survives in writing where sharper words would be too much. It comes from the same root as dull — a dolt is somebody dulled rather than somebody wicked, and the word carries no malice.
1noundoltA stupid person.
“You dolt! You've locked the keys inside the car again!”
dolt is an insult.
From a dialect word dold, confused, a variant of dulled, from Old English dol, foolish.
Middle English
dold
English, today
dolt
Built from
First used as a noun in Early Modern English, from dialectal English dold (“stupid, confused”), from Middle English dold, a variant of dulled, dult (“dulled”), past participle of dullen, dollen (“to make dull, make stupid”), from dull, dul, dwal (“stupid”). More at dull.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire