There can be no doubt that the word in Chaucer is this Arabic word; nor, I think, that Speght's story is really taught by the Arabs, our teachers in mathematics. Whether the application is from Alexander, (they would know nothing of his date with regard to Pythagoras), or merely from two-horned, is doubtful. The latter might possibly mean the ox.
Mr. Halliwell gives a quotation from Stanyhurst, in which it means "dull persons"—an obvious misuse of it for Englishmen, and which Skene fortifies by an A.-S. derivation, but which is clearly not Cressida's meaning, or she would have said, "I am Dulcarnon," not "I am at Dulcarnon;" and so Mrs. Roper.
It may seem difficult what Pandarus can mean:
"Dulcarnon clepid is fleming of wretches,
It semith hard, for wretchis wol nought lere
For very slouthe, or othir wilfull tetches,
This said is by them that ben't worth two fetches,
But ye ben wise."
Whether he means that wretches call it fleming or not, his argument is, "You are not a wretch." Speght's derivation seems to mean, "Quod stultos vertit." Fleamas, A.-S. (Lye), is fuga, fugacio, from flean, to flee. Pandarus, I think, does not mean to give the derivation of the word, but its application of fools, a stumbling-block, or puzzle.
C.B.