'When There Is Evident Occasion for It'

I learned the word blockhead, as I did much of my early, more useful vocabulary, from The Three Stooges. It is safely nonobscene and could be used in front of adults. Block implies a lifeless chunk of wood or concrete, heavy and inert. Because we daily encounter the dim and foolish, one’s inventory of derision must be kept up-to-date and overflowing. English is well-stocked with such words (recall W.C. Fields’ delight in luddy-duddy, mooncalf and jabbernowl), though not as well-stocked or nuanced as Yiddish (shmeggege, shmendrik, yutz).

The word dates from the sixteenth century and originally referred to the wooden heads used to hold hats or wigs. Shakespeare used it in this sense in Coriolanus. Simultaneously, according to the OED, people began using the word in the modern sense to describe the backward and slow. See Thomas Nashe: “Bee he the veriest block-head vnder heauen.”

The most famous use of blockhead in the language, as reported by James Boswell, is surely Dr. Johnson’s: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Johnson must have been fond of the word. On this date, March 22, in 1776, Boswell and Johnson are in Birmingham and visit the home of Edmund Hector, a surgeon and friend of Johnson’s since they were boys in Lichfield:

“A very stupid maid, who opened the door, told us, that ‘her master was gone out; he was gone to the country; she could not tell when he would return.’ In short, she gave us a miserable reception; and Johnson observed, ‘She would have behaved no better to people who wanted him in the way of his profession.’ He said to her, ‘My name is Johnson; tell him I called. Will you remember the name?’ She answered with rustick simplicity, in the Warwickshire pronunciation, ‘I don't understand you, Sir.’—'Blockhead, (said he,) I'll write.’ I never heard the word blockhead applied to a woman before, though I do not see why it should not, when there is evident occasion for it. He, however, made another attempt to make her understand him, and roared loud in her ear, 'Johnson,' and then she catched the sound.”

It's true: I hadn’t thought of applying blockhead to a woman. Something about it sounds masculine, though I find no substantiation for my assumption in the OED.