"Either I am a great writer or a nincompoop”: Virginia Woolf, “nincompoop”, Sebastian Brant, and Basel

Writing in her diary on 29 October 1922, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) reflected on herself: "Either I am a great writer or a nincompoop." This comic shift in register sent me down the rabbit hole of "nincompoop". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its origin is unknown, but it has a