fool1
/fuːl
/- Dealing with drunken fools who don't know when to quit is the downside to any bar job.
- More than a necessary evil, it has become a mandatory fool's errand.
- We're all on a fool's errand, credit card in hand.
Synonyms
- I think Australians would resent this government if they saw they were being duped and treated like fools by them.
- But no; I was deceiving myself, living in a fool's paradise.
- However transitory the contentment is, one loves to live in a fool's paradise.
Synonyms
- He, too, is an extension of More, both of his comic side in general and of his love of fools and clowns in particular, as reported by Erasmus.
- Samis are often stereotyped as the comical helpers of Santa Claus or, even more negatively, as drunken fools or jesters.
Synonyms
- Do you mean to suggest that Chinese people are fooled or fool themselves into living in a false world?
- She was fooled into using her fame to help promote a slimming drink, which turned out to be tea.
- The design is practically flawless, the use of textures and atmosphere so real that you are fooled into a sense of realism.
Synonyms
- These may only be laughing and fooling about, but given all the publicity about drugs etc, people are afraid to walk past or talk to them.
- Our engineers were fooling about in the studio singing vulgar songs and making rude remarks in front of the microphone.
- Destined for academic greatness, Masters says he still had time to fool about at grammar school in Richmond, North Yorkshire.
Synonyms
- However, he neglected to tell me that he had a girlfriend for the entire three years we'd been fooling around.
- But for most of history, they just did the fooling around without calling it anything.
Synonyms
- Soppy fool dedications over and done with, I leave you with the following thought, supplied by the ever-reliable source of quotes that is Hamish McT.
- Lord knows nothing else in the fool thing works.
- Sorry about the fool thing, I just got carried away.
Phrases
be no (or nobody's) fool
a fool and his money are soon parted
fools rush in where angels fear to tread
make a fool of
more fool ——
play (or act) the fool
there's no fool like an old fool
you could have fooled me!
Origin
Middle English: from Old French fol 'fool, foolish', from Latin follis 'bellows, windbag', by extension 'empty-headed person'.
The root of fool is Latin follis, which originally meant ‘bellows, windbag’, and came to mean ‘an empty-headed person’, in the same way that windbag (LME, but E19th in this sense) does in English. The use of fool to mean a jester or clown also goes back to the Middle Ages. People in the 16th century seem to have been particularly aware of the ways in which someone may come to grief through lack of wisdom, especially in their dealings with others. A fool and his money are soon parted, a fool at forty is a fool indeed, and there's no fool like an old fool all come from this period. Two centuries later foolish behaviour was still a matter for concern—in 1711 the poet Alexander Pope published the line which has become proverbial, ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’ Eager prospectors have been mistaking worthless minerals such as iron pyrites, or fool's gold, for gold since the late 19th century. The term foolscap for a paper size dates from the late 17th century, and is said to be named after a former watermark representing a fool's cap. Sadly, a traditional story that after the Civil War Parliament gave orders that a fool's cap should replace the royal arms in the watermark of the paper used for the Journals of the House of Commons apparently has no basis in fact.
Rhymes
fool2
/fuːl/- Fruit fools, jellies, and ice creams were popular desserts.
- For dessert, we ordered the rhubarb and strawberry fool, with stem ginger ice cream.
- Use it trickled over ice-cream sundaes, on pancakes, or with the banana fool above.
Origin
Late 16th century: perhaps from fool1.