A dullard is somebody slow-witted and boring. An utter dullard, a room of dullards, called him a dullard.
It is old-fashioned and literary, which softens it — nobody has been genuinely wounded by this word in a century. The -ard ending marks a person characterised by something, as in drunkard, sluggard and laggard, and it is always disparaging.
1noundullardSomebody slow-witted and boring.
“He was treated like a dullard at school, but he later became a brilliant engineer.”
dullard is an insult.
Middle English dullard, from dull plus -ard, an ending marking a person given to something.
Middle English
dullard
English, today
dullard
From Middle English dullard, dollard, equivalent to dull + ard. Compare Faroese døll (“dullard, good-for-nothing, blockhead”), Norwegian Nynorsk døl (“idiot, simpleton”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA