(n.) The state of being foolish; want of good sense; levity, weakness, or derangement of mind.
(n.) A foolish act; an inconsiderate or thoughtless procedure; weak or light-minded conduct; foolery.
(n.) Scandalous crime; sin; specifically, as applied to a woman, wantonness.
(n.) The result of a foolish action or enterprise.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is a folly to think measures to fix eurozone governance will suffice, however needed those may be.
(2) A senior Conservative cabinet minister has issued a warning to leaders "of all political parties" that putting Britain's membership of the European Union at risk would be "complete folly" and that the "irresponsible" debate taking place is damaging the country's influence at the negotiating table.
(3) Whenever I hear about David Blunkett's tests for new immigrants, I think of my mother's initial impressions and don't know whether to laugh or cry: laugh because of the patent folly of his attempts to fix what is fluid and to codify what is contested in British identity; or cry at the racism that has inspired it, the nationalism that informs it, and the historical, political and cultural illiteracy that infects every part of it.
(4) Vice, folly and humbug – it is the point of satire really.
(5) Honor & Folly ( honorandfolly.com , one bedroom $165 a night, both bedrooms $215, plus a sofabed for children) is a home away from home with a fully stocked kitchen and a cosy living area decorated with vintage and locally crafted furniture.
(6) His friend Dingle Foot drafted an editorial that David then sharpened up, inserting phrases that summed up his outlook: 'We had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and crookedness...It is no longer possible to bomb countries because you fear that your trading interests will be harmed...this new feeling for the sanctity of human life is the best element in the modern world.'
(7) ‘Patriotism’ is a difficult concept to pin, and one man’s patriotism can easily be misjudged as folly or even treachery if we start judging based on a narrow understanding of the term.” Walid, a Muslim veteran of the navy, added that “even though we invaded Iraq based upon bogus information, that doesn’t diminish the sacrifice of Captain Khan and other American service members who lost their lives”.
(8) A few years before Lady Thatcher and Mr Letwin became obsessed with the poll tax, the American historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book about the march of folly in human affairs from the Trojan to the Vietnamese war.
(9) To continue along this path of folly is not compatible with the maintenance of wealth, nor with the health of humans or the biosphere.
(10) At 568,969, the paper’s circulation had recently overtaken that of its old rival, the Sunday Times : it’s not true that it plummeted after Suez as a result of the outrage caused by Astor adding the line: “We had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and such crookedness” to Dingle Foot’s leader – but well-heeled middle-class readers who cancelled their subscriptions were replaced by relatively impoverished students and leftwing intellectuals.
(11) Some startlingly grand privately owned buildings have repeatedly appeared on the annual register of the most important listed buildings at risk – virtually all the HHA properties are listed, and many are also scheduled ancient monuments or set in grade I gardens – including garden buildings and follies at Castle Howard in Yorkshire and Frogmore mausoleum, which holds some of the Queen's ancestors, in the grounds of Windsor Castle.
(12) In London, the Times newspaper called Ford’s position denying aid to New York City an “act of monumental folly”.
(13) Giles Swayne London • "Intelligent" Boris Johnson commits the age-old folly of mistaking good fortune, selfishness, narcissism and aggression for intelligence, but unwittingly demonstrates the wrongness of his position.
(14) That police can legally do this, the QCCL argues, illustrates the folly and unfairness of laws intended to safeguard an event at which police, on their own projections, will outnumber protesters three to one.
(15) This sad state of affairs shows the folly of handing over taxpayers’ money to unaccountable groups to run schools.
(16) There are obvious implications for public services, and the clear link between poor public services and demand for healthcare is ignored at our folly.
(17) In a household, it would be economic folly to lay out grand plans without having the money to pay for them.
(18) The cliff-side Mussenden Temple is a folly that was modelled on the Temple of Vesta in Rome and built for the Earl Bishop of Derry (one of Lord Bristol’s eccentric forbears), in 1785.
(19) Follies plays exquisitely on the unreliability of memory and the ephemerality of theatre; it is a stark warning against the distorting dangers of nostalgia.
(20) In giving $850bn to the IMF the G20 are only making the poor suffer more, and forcing them to pay for the folly and greed of bankers and speculators.
Lunacy
Definition:
(n.) Insanity or madness; properly, the kind of insanity which is broken by intervals of reason, -- formerly supposed to be influenced by the changes of the moon; any form of unsoundness of mind, except idiocy; mental derangement or alienation.
(n.) A morbid suspension of good sense or judgment, as through fanaticism.
Example Sentences:
(1) Italy At least England know what to expect from the Azzurri : a masterclass in the retention of possession, orchestrated by Andrea Pirlo in his quarterback role; a stingy defence most likely forged at Juventus; and a maverick forward capable of brilliance and lunacy in equal measures.
(2) Afterwards, Josiah Heyman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso, who studies the border, spelt out what he regards as the lunacy of Sensenbrenner's approach.
(3) Even if they don't involve the heights of lunacy scraped by PFI, the returns on the new scheme will have to be higher than those on government bonds in order to pull in investors.
(4) Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, hit out at the "lunacy" of a previous report from the council, which found that the level of benefits given out in the UK is "inadequate".
(5) I have to assume that an outside entity was feeding her lines, as it is the only explanation for her shambolic, disjointed lunacy.
(6) A fter the summer referendum lunacy, there was a back-to-school feel travelling up to the Green party’s conference last September .
(7) In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, Nunes expressed exasperation with the House' hard-right faction, saying it was "lunacy" to shut down the government in an effort to stop Obamacare.
(8) BRITAIN VOTES FOR LUNACY”, screams the Sun, without waiting for the final result.
(9) We also need to be outward-looking, working in Europe though not afraid to criticise the lunacy of what’s happening in the eurozone and Greece today.
(10) One source briefed the Sunday papers that the education secretary's costly obsession with free schools approached " lunacy "; hours later, a second source leaked official emails that undermined the Lib Dems' claims that they had figured out how to fund their own pet project, free meals for all infant pupils.
(11) Full of scientific lunacy and wild action, this book spawned a slew of sequels chronicling the exploits of group Capt Timothy "Tiger" Clinton RAF (retired), his son Rex, Prof Lucias Brane and his butler Judkins in the good ship Spacemaster (which handily runs on the cosmic rays all around us – which certainly saves on fuel bills).
(12) What’s needed is strongly worded advice from America’s allies about the fragility of the global economy and lunacy of a global trade war.
(13) Odemwingie first criticised West Brom following his abortive move to Queens Park Rangers on 31 January, when he turned up at Loftus Road without permission in an act labelled as "total lunacy" by his manager, Steve Clarke.
(14) Dominic Dromgoole Shakespeare's Globe Even from the perspective of an unsubsidised theatre, it would seem perilous to the point of lunacy to lessen the amount of overall subsidy in our culture.
(15) Thames river pageants have always been a mixture of the grand and the loony, and this one looks like it is going to have elements of complete lunacy.
(16) Spare me the weirdos who can't outgrow their attachment to them; and spare me the fetishising lunacy that compels adults to find a way to communicate with their children through the agency of soft mouths.
(17) In the preface he wrote: "I do not believe the fable that men read travel books to escape from reality: they read to escape into it, from a crazy wonderland of armaments, cant, political speeches at once insincere and illiterate, propaganda, and social injustice which the lunacy of humanity has constructed over a period of years."
(18) But there is a difference between enjoying the lunacy and letting such lunatic declarations become the norm – which they now are, from supermodels to CEOs.
(19) Although a 1964 film captured something of the play's anarchic lunacy, with Eric Sykes constructing a model of the Old Bailey in his living room while a mute Jonathan Miller taught 100 speak-your-weight machines to sing the Hallelujah Chorus, the play was too theatrical for the cinema.
(20) I tell him of a particularly vile one, with references to hanging, lunacy and HIV.