An archaic insult referring to a blockhead or stupid person, suggesting a head as hard and empty as a wooden block.
Compound of 'block' and 'pate' (an old word for head). This insult was popular in 16th and 17th century English literature and comedy.
Shakespeare's contemporaries loved creative insults like 'blockpate'—Elizabethan playwrights invented hundreds of imaginative put-downs that have mostly vanished from English.
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