FOOLERY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Foolery

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/fˈuləri/ Listen

noun

Foolery n. (pl. fooleries)

The practice of folly; the behavior of a fool; foolish behavior; absurdity. "Folly in fools bears not so strong a note, As foolery in the wise, when wit doth dote."

An act of folly or weakness; a foolish practice; something absurd or nonsensical. "That Pythagoras, Plato, or Orpheus, believed in any of these fooleries, it can not be suspected."

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Etymology of 'Foolery'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Foolery" Quotes from Famous Books

... England, where it obtained the warm commendation of Richard Baxter; and it may be supposed to have had an important effect in producing the more disastrous delusion which followed three years after. The Goodwin children soon got well: in other words, they were tired of their atrocious foolery; and the death of their victim gave them a pretense for ...

— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562--1733 • Various

... what had happened? Andros, his face mottled with pallor, was pulling himself together, and striving to resume the arrogant insolence of his customary bearing. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a husky murmur replaces the harsh stridency of his usual utterance. "What devilish foolery is this—" But ere he can get further, some bucolic statesman brings his massive palm down on the table with a bang that makes the oaken plank crack, and thunders out—"The charter! ...

— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... as a fleshless ghost;—in which capacity I thought I had a glimpse of him looking over the shoulder of a particolored clown, in a carriage full of London Cockneys driving towards the Capitol. This good-humored foolery will go on for several days to come, ending always with the celebrated Horse-race, of horses without riders. The long street is cleared in the centre by troops, and half a dozen quadrupeds, ornamented like Grimaldi in a London pantomime, scamper away, with ...

— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... a male as Tibby—was enough to stop the foolery. The barrier of sex, though decreasing among the civilized, is still high, and higher on the side of women. Helen could tell her sister all, and her cousin much about Paul; she told her brother nothing. It was not prudishness, for she now spoke ...

— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked—and "thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove, who came nearest to the old actors, revived the character some few seasons ago, and made it sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd was it, as it came out of Nature's hands. It might be said to remain in ...

— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

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