The dunce’s cap fits, Sir!

QUESTION What is the origin of the

dunce’s cap? The dunce’s cap refers to a hat worn by Roman Catholic Scottish philosopher and theologian John Duns, known as Duns Scotus, who died in 1308.

A medieval academic who worked in Oxford, Cambridge and Paris, his many enemies ridiculed him and his followers by associating him with foolishness.

The theme of Duns’s work was that we should be able to argue rationally and understand theology rather than rely on faith alone. he produced arguments for topics as varied as God’s existence and a proof of Mary’s immaculate conception.

his obsession with trying to demonstrate everything through reason led him to quote ancient Greek thought nearly ten times as often as the Bible, a faux pas for theologians at the time.

It was ultimately the emergence of Protestantism in england in the 16th century that led to the destruction of much of his work (and many students were thrilled by no longer having to study tedious logical arguments).

To this day, Duns’ theories, like his hat — with which he is routinely depicted and which he wore because he wasn’t very tall and had superstitious beliefs about the intellect- enhancing potential of cosmic rays — are taken as a sign of obsession with irrelevant details of thought and not the arguments themselves.

Peter O’Neil, Wivenhoe, Essex.

QUESTION Is ‘punk’ an ancient word?

SeveRAl meanings have been attributed to the term ‘punk’ over the course of history, and it has consistently carried unappealing negative connotations — ranging from sexual deviancy to prostitution and severe inexperience.

The etymological origin of the word is obscure, but is thought to have originated Everyone’s fool: Scots philosopher and theologian John Duns in Britain in the 16th century to denote a prostitute.

Shakespeare used the term in The Merry Wives Of Windsor (1602): ‘This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers.’

In Measure For Measure (1623), he used the word to illustrate how an unmarried woman was perceived to be a prostitute based on her failure to conform to the expected gender roles of her time: ‘My lord, she may be a punk; for many of them are neither maid, widow nor wife.’ (According to the character lucio’s logic, if a woman is none of these things, she must be a prostitute.)

But the term took a strange turn when it arrived in America: during the 1700s, it was used as a description for slowburning rotten wood or fungus, which, when dry, could be used as tinder.

In this context, it was a measure of an object’s lack of worth and quality in the sense that ‘punk’ objects were believed to be cheap or worthless rubbish.

In the early 20th century, ‘punk’ entered the U.S. prison system’s lingo, where it was used to denote male victims of sex crimes — a definition that led to an understanding of ‘punks’ as petty criminals, deviants, gangsters or hoodlums.

This sense was widely popularised in Tv shows such as Kojak and hollywood films such as Dirty harry, which features Clint eastwood as homicide police inspector harry Callahan delivering one of celluloid’s most famous lines: ‘You’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?’

Finally, it was adopted by punk rockers in the Seventies. They embraced the word to depict themselves as rebellious deviants feared by society.

Jan Saunders, Brighton.

QUESTION What currency was used in the U.S. before the introduction of the dollar? When were the first bills issued, and when did George Washington first appear on bills?

In The 1650s, the colony of Massachusetts Bay was proving a commercial success, but an inadequate supply of money put its future development in jeopardy. england, in the midst of the Civil War, could not afford to send gold and silver coins to the colonies.

Taking matters into their own hands, the Boston authorities allowed two settlers, John hull and Robert Sanderson, to set up a mint in the capital in 1652 and they were soon striking silver coinage — shillings, sixpences and threepences.

This was the origin of America’s most famous colonial coin, the pine tree shilling (the coin carried a depiction of the tree on its obverse). But the mint was seen as a threat to english sovereignty and closed down in 1682.

Called upon by the British to help fight the French in Canada in 1689 in King William’s War, the authorities in Massachusetts struggled to comply because of a shortage of coinage, so on December 10, 1690, the government issued certificates to the troops in lieu of paying them with coins.

To that end, the General Court of Massachusetts authorised the issuing of £7,000 in public paper currency, the first in the Western world.

As these notes could be redeemed for coinage — they were as good as gold or silver — someone had a revolutionary idea: why not leave them in circulation? After all, everyone accepted their status as ‘real’ money. So it was done.

Colonial authorities elsewhere took note, and when the Crown did not stop the experiment in the Bay Colony, they also began issuing paper currency.

The first one-dollar bill was issued as a legal tender note (United States note) in 1862 during the American Civil War. It bore a portrait of Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury.

In 1869, the $1 U.S. note was redesigned with a portrait of George Washington in the centre and a vignette of Christopher Columbus sighting land to the left.

Aaron Black, London SE12.