Word of the day: Puddinghead

Pudding head (puddenhead, pudd'nhead): a person who is not very bright; dolt, dullard, pillock, poor fish, stupe, berk, blockhead, bonehead, dunce, dunderhead, hammerhead, knucklehead, loggerhead, lunkhead, muttonhead, numskull, nitwit

Many historians believe that the term “pudding head” came from the American colonial belief that if children learning to walk fell frequently and hit their heads, they could scramble their brains, making them like the consistency of pudding, thereby becoming “pudding heads.” In Colonial Williamsburg’s Children’s glossary, it adds that toddlers were often and lovingly referred to as “little pudding heads."

Some children, in fact wore pudding caps to prevent them from becoming pudding heads!

pudding cap in Australia

A pudding cap is a stuffed roll placed on a toddler’s head and tied in the back. It was worn for the same reason children today wear helmets — to protect the brain from damage in a fall.

In several Flemish and Dutch paintings of the early 17th century toddlers of the 1620-30’s are depicted wearing their pudding caps. A drawing by Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) shows a toddler wearing one that is a sausage shaped padded roll of fabric, tied at the back of the head. There is one narrow ribbon stretched across the top of the head (from side to side, not front to back) and continues as ties under the chin. There is a linen cap under the pudding cap.

There's even a movement in Australia to require all children in day care to wear a pudding cap. Don't believe it? Read here.

You may have noted the irony in Pudd'nhead Wilson: though our eponymous character is given the nickname of a dunce because of his initial "half-dog" comment (and his subsequent obsession with collecting fingerprints), he turns out to be among the smarter folk of his day, at least when it comes time to defending the innocent.