Dictionary
Thesaurus
Reference
Translate
Web
Fool's
Sponsored Links Fools
Get Insight Into The Latest Stocks & Much More In Our Free Report!
www.fool.com
1 dictionary results for: Fool's
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
fool       (fōōl)  Pronunciation Key 
n.  
  1. One who is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding.
  2. One who acts unwisely on a given occasion: I was a fool to have quit my job.
  3. One who has been tricked or made to appear ridiculous; a dupe: They made a fool of me by pretending I had won.
  4. Informal A person with a talent or enthusiasm for a certain activity: a dancing fool; a fool for skiing.
  5. A member of a royal or noble household who provided entertainment, as with jokes or antics; a jester.
  6. One who subverts convention or orthodoxy or varies from social conformity in order to reveal spiritual or moral truth: a holy fool.
  7. A dessert made of stewed or puréed fruit mixed with cream or custard and served cold.
  8. Archaic A mentally deficient person; an idiot.

v.   fooled, fool·ing, fools

v.   tr.
  1. To deceive or trick; dupe: "trying to learn how to fool a trout with a little bit of floating fur and feather" (Charles Kuralt).
  2. To confound or prove wrong; surprise, especially pleasantly: We were sure they would fail, but they fooled us.

v.   intr.
  1. Informal
    1. To speak or act facetiously or in jest; joke: I was just fooling when I said I had to leave.
    2. To behave comically; clown.
    3. To feign; pretend: He said he had a toothache but he was only fooling.
  2. To engage in idle or frivolous activity.
  3. To toy, tinker, or mess: shouldn't fool with matches.

adj.   Informal
Foolish; stupid: off on some fool errand or other.
Phrasal Verbs:
fool around Informal
  1. To engage in idle or casual activity; putter: was fooling around with the old car in hopes of fixing it.
  2. To engage in frivolous activity; make fun.
  3. To engage in casual, often promiscuous sexual acts.

Phrasal Verb(s):
fool around Informal
  1. To engage in idle or casual activity; putter: was fooling around with the old car in hopes of fixing it.
  2. To engage in frivolous activity; make fun.
  3. To engage in casual, often promiscuous sexual acts.
fool away
To waste (time or money) foolishly; squander: fooled away the week's pay on Friday night.

Idiom(s):
play/act the fool
  1. To act in an irresponsible or foolish manner.
  2. To behave in a playful or comical manner.

[Middle English fol, from Old French, from Late Latin follis, windbag, fool, from Latin follis, bellows; see bhel-2 in Indo-European roots.]

Word History: The pejorative nature of the term fool is strengthened by a knowledge of its etymology. Its source, the Latin word follis, meant "a bag or sack, a large inflated ball, a pair of bellows." Users of the word in Late Latin, however, saw a resemblance between the bellows or the inflated ball and a person who was what we would call "a windbag" or "an airhead." The word, which passed into English by way of French, is first recorded in English in a work written around the beginning of the 13th century with the sense "a foolish, stupid, or ignorant person."

(Download Now or Buy the Book)
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
CITE THIS SOURCE|PRINT
Share This:Share This: digg.comShare This: ma.gnolia.comShare This: www.stumbleupon.comShare This: del.icio.usShare This: FacebookShare This: favorites.live.comShare This: www.technorati.comShare This: furl.netShare This: myweb2.search.yahoo.comShare This: www.google.com
Sponsored Links Fools
Get Insight Into The Latest Stocks & Much More In Our Free Report!
www.fool.com