Dictionaries › English

fool

Pronunciation: /fuːl/

The English word “fool” has 12 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A person with poor judgment or little intelligence.
  2. A jester; a person whose role was to entertain a sovereign and the court (or lower personages).
  3. A stock character typified by unintelligence, naïveté or lucklessness, usually as a form of comic relief; often used as a source of insight or pathos for the audience, as such characters are generally less bound by social expectations.
  4. Someone who has been made a fool of or tricked; dupe.
  5. Someone who derives pleasure from something specified.
  6. An informal greeting akin to buddy, dude, or man.
  7. A particular card in a tarot deck, representing a jester.
  8. A type of dessert made of puréed fruit and custard or cream.

verb

  1. To trick; to deceive.
  2. To act in an idiotic manner; to act foolishly.
  3. To make a fool of; to make act the fool.

adjective

  1. Foolish.

Etymology

From Middle English fol (“fool”), from Old French fol (cf. modern French fou (“mad”)) from Latin follis. Doublet of fals and follis. Displaced native Old English dwæs.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “fool” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.