What's the difference between fool and foolishness?

Fool


Definition:

  • (n.) A compound of gooseberries scalded and crushed, with cream; -- commonly called gooseberry fool.
  • (n.) One destitute of reason, or of the common powers of understanding; an idiot; a natural.
  • (n.) A person deficient in intellect; one who acts absurdly, or pursues a course contrary to the dictates of wisdom; one without judgment; a simpleton; a dolt.
  • (n.) One who acts contrary to moral and religious wisdom; a wicked person.
  • (n.) One who counterfeits folly; a professional jester or buffoon; a retainer formerly kept to make sport, dressed fantastically in motley, with ridiculous accouterments.
  • (v. i.) To play the fool; to trifle; to toy; to spend time in idle sport or mirth.
  • (v. t.) To infatuate; to make foolish.
  • (v. t.) To use as a fool; to deceive in a shameful or mortifying manner; to impose upon; to cheat by inspiring foolish confidence; as, to fool one out of his money.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) After trading mistakes, Wawrinka got lucky at 30-30, mishitting a service return and fooling Djokovic.
  • (2) How opiates became the love of my life | Alisha Choquette Read more The numbers are not specific to the type of drug used, but we’d be fools to think opiates don’t lead the list.
  • (3) Sage did not suffer fools gladly, and often the world seemed increasingly full of them.
  • (4) But it is difficult not to conclude that the survey, which ends on St Andrew’s day, 30 November, has been something of a fools errand for those loyal driveway-trampers.
  • (5) The idea that these problems exist on the other side of the world, and that we Australians can ignore them by sheltering comfortably in our own sequestered corner of the globe, is a fool’s delusion.” Brandis sought to reach out to Australian Muslims, saying the threat came “principally from a small number of people among us who try to justify criminal acts by perverting the meaning of Islam”.
  • (6) "So don't be fooled again: you cannot afford Labour.
  • (7) The Peppers like to be jerks (at Dingwalls Swan dedicated a song to “all you whiney Britishers who can suck my American cock”), but don’t let the surface attitude fool you.
  • (8) So it is only a fool, like me, who would walk nonchalantly around the headland during a high wind.
  • (9) A few months later, the certificate was discovered being used in Iran to fool people who were accessing Gmail into thinking that their connection was secure; in fact any suitably equipped hacker could have monitored their emails.
  • (10) It's Jane Austen all over again, and we've just fooled ourselves that the complicated financial system has changed a thing.
  • (11) No sufferer of fools, he also found it difficult to put up with what he felt to be the arrogance of some colleagues.
  • (12) An immensely cerebral man, who trained himself to need only six hours of sleep - believing that a woman should have seven and only a fool eight - Mishcon was not a man given to small talk, nor one who would tolerate prattle for the sake of it.
  • (13) Standing Rock protests: this is only the beginning Read more “When the Dakota Access Pipeline breaks (and we know that too many pipelines do), millions of people will have crude-oil-contaminated water … don’t let the automatic sink faucets in your homes fool you – that water comes from somewhere, and the second its source is contaminated, so is your bathtub, and your sink, and your drinking liquid.
  • (14) He has been declared "a Shakespearean fool, the only one who can say what others can't" and "an antidote to the proliferation of neo-Nazi movements which took hold of Hungary and Greece".
  • (15) It helps to make testing fun, capitalizes on the student's natural tendency to fool around, and teaches something in the process.
  • (16) 7.44pm BST The April Fools' Day jokes have slowed as people actually get back to work, so we're going to sign off.
  • (17) He said: "To people of a certain age, Stuart Hall will be known as the presenter of It's A Knockout, a good-natured TV programme in which members of the public cheerfully made fools of themselves on camera.
  • (18) Although his finance minister François Baroin pledged on Friday night that there would be no more "austerity measures", only a fool, or someone who expected to be out of office later this year, would promise otherwise.
  • (19) In other words, Mr Johnson is making a fool of himself and of Britain over issues that will have the deepest national repercussions.
  • (20) Cue the day’s first SPR (silent printer rage): another four minutes eaten up by a printer refusing to be fooled by the off-on tactic.

Foolishness


Definition:

  • (n.) The quality of being foolish.
  • (n.) A foolish practice; an absurdity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) So, logic would dictate that if Greeks are genuinely in favour of reform – and opinion polls have consistently shown wide support for many of the structural changes needed – they would be foolish to give these two parties another chance.
  • (2) It would be foolish to bet that Saudi Arabia will exist in its current form a generation from now.” Memories of how the Saudis and Opec deliberately triggered an economic crisis in the west in retaliation for US aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war still rankle.
  • (3) That's foolish, because Real Madrid rarely look more uncomfortable than at set pieces.
  • (4) "We regret that Congress was forced to waste its time voting on a foolish bill that was premised entirely on false claims and ignorance," David Jenkins, an REP official, said in a statement.
  • (5) Shorten said while Hicks was “foolish to get caught up in the Afghanistan conflict” the court decision showed an injustice.
  • (6) Many commentators considered the suggestion merely foolish, but computer hackers issued death threats against her and her children, which she promptly posted on Twitter, along with the defiant message: "Get stuffed, losers.
  • (7) And it means that if Labour were to win, Mr Brown would be very foolish, indeed downright wrong, to move Mr Darling.
  • (8) "It was a certain kind of titillation the shop offered," the critic Matthew Collings has written, "sexual but also hopeless, destructive, foolish, funny, sad."
  • (9) Describing the moment McKellen knocked on his dressing room door he said: “I ushered him in nervously, expecting notes for my poor performance or indiscipline – I was a foolish, naughty young actor.
  • (10) But what people did when they were young and foolish, or even when they were not yet public figures, is not always the same.
  • (11) While we have this, it would be foolish to pursue a policy of still constraining resources in the acute sector.
  • (12) All three echoed remarks made recently by the Bank’s governor, Mark Carney, who said it would be “foolish” to cut rates in response to a temporary fall in inflation.
  • (13) Since the initially peaceful demonstrations against his regime began more than three years ago, he has proved himself, by turns, foolish, craven and vicious.
  • (14) In a high-risk, 65-minute speech in Manchester delivered without notes, and 20 minutes longer than he intended, Miliband tried to take the mantle of the 19th-century Tory prime minister Benjamin Disraeli's one nation, pointedly grabbing the territory and language of the centre ground which he believes David Cameron has foolishly vacated.
  • (15) But one backbencher, West Australian Liberal Dennis Jensen , has said it is foolish to set up a $20bn medical research fund at the same time as the government is cutting money from scientific agencies, including the CSIRO and the Australian Research Council.
  • (16) Donald Trump is too weak, too foolish and too chaotic to see beyond the immediate crises he has created.
  • (17) Here, too, Capote displayed uncanny journalistic skills, capturing even the most languid and enigmatic of subjects – Brando in his pomp – and eliciting the kinds of confidences that left the actor reflecting ruefully on his "unutterable foolishness".
  • (18) They privately acknowledge they were foolish in taking the bait, but argue they have broken no rules since they were offered no jobs, and therefore have no commercial interests to declare in the MPs' register.
  • (19) "Hopefully, the lesson is to stop this foolish childishness," McCain said Thursday on CNN.
  • (20) The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.” As for the social conditions that obtain: “It is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.” Looking back on my political activism of the 1970s and 80s, there was a lot of refusing to accept existing conditions on the basis that they were “wrong and foolish”.