bedunce meaning (archaic): definition, etymology and quotations

bedunce

verb

Etymology From be- + dunce.

Archaic, Rare To treat as, or reduce to, a dunce; to make stupid.

After he has sufficiently bedunced us through several pages, he at last has the tenderness to answer to our particular objections, and that with sufficient perplexity.1866, Oliver Goldsmith, The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, page 515:
[…] reamsful of financial or statistical calculations; the figures of which, when duly emitted in the House, sufficed to bedunce the brains of five hundred wiser men; […]1843, Catherine Grace Frances Gore, The Birthright, page 98: