What's the difference between fool and idiot?

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.

Idiot


Definition:

  • (n.) A man in private station, as distinguished from one holding a public office.
  • (n.) An unlearned, ignorant, or simple person, as distinguished from the educated; an ignoramus.
  • (n.) A human being destitute of the ordinary intellectual powers, whether congenital, developmental, or accidental; commonly, a person without understanding from birth; a natural fool; a natural; an innocent.
  • (n.) A fool; a simpleton; -- a term of reproach.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Thrasher Mitchell: Then why is that idiot Bernard Hogan-Howe getting a knighthood when his plebby plods tried to stitch me up?
  • (2) According to Deborah Mattinson, his pollster, Brown " loved slogans and believed them to be imbued with a mystical power capable of persuading the most intransigent voter", and therefore went a bundle on them – not least " A future fair for all ", the surreal dud with which Labour went to the country in 2010, following 2005's equally idiotic " forward not back ".
  • (3) But cowardly useful idiots of Warwick have banned @MaryamNamazie.” On Sunday night the union released a statement reversing the decision, which it stated had gone against normal procedures.
  • (4) Aren't the older generation always going to think kids are idiots?
  • (5) Treating voters like idiots doesn't often work – so the posters with a picture of a sick baby, saying, "She needs a new cardiac facility not an alternative voting system", or of the soldier, reading, "He needs bulletproof vests, not an alternative voting system", must surely be an insult too far to the public's intelligence.
  • (6) The boss of a successful US hedge fund has quit the industry with an extraordinary farewell letter dismissing his rivals as over-privileged "idiots" and thanking "stupid" traders for making him rich.
  • (7) Who can complain of physical fear, of the nightmare of a baby eating its way out of your abdomen, of the loss of professional autonomy, staring at a stranger's idiotic grin?
  • (8) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Flynn in 2016: ‘When you’re given immunity, you’ve probably committed a crime’ – video Vladimir Putin’s Russia is generally regarded as America’s mightiest enemy, however idiotic this might be.
  • (9) Whatever they'd gone through in the past, they were idiots for not understanding the modern world.
  • (10) If he was on the verge of becoming a "national treasure" to the minuscule percentage of the nation who could identify him by name were they shown a picture of him, this latest episode will have reminded them that there really are bigger and better idiots in public life to get behind.
  • (11) This is the most pathetic thing I’ve seen in my whole time in the United States Senate … I think they ought to stop posturing and acting like idiots.” Sean Spicer , the White House press secretary, branded the Democrats’ actions “embarrassing”.
  • (12) I picture myself at 80, the idiot who did something faddish instead of what people had always done and can never retire.
  • (13) But it is often said that only an idiot fights a war on two fronts.
  • (14) April 14, 2015 _Ds73_ (@darkeststar73) @sueperkins complete idiots think they can say what they like, glad we're not all the same !
  • (15) Many on the Right still view it as the epitome of all that was irresponsible, idiotic and dangerous about the Sixties, while many on the terminally fractured Left still mourn 1968 as the last great moment of revolutionary possibility.
  • (16) "But she also divides the critics like that other old-school oddball, Norman Wisdom, who was written off as a witless, irritating idiot with a penchant for falling over by some, and seen as a comic genius by others."
  • (17) "Oh, it says, 'You'll regret this one day, you idiot.'"
  • (18) 12.25pm: "Björn Lubbers mentioned in his email you posted at 10am that 'the Dutchies are a very friendly, hospitable and tolerant people, but humans will be humans and idiots will be idiots ...', emails Karin Prill.
  • (19) Every magistrate hears idiotic excuses from stupid criminals, but this is the DWP's unsubtle nudge that all claimants are fraudsters beneath the skin.
  • (20) I'll be cheering for Germany, and should we advance, hide my Germany-hat as deeply as possible in my backpack on the way home ... the Dutchies are a very friendly, hospitable and tolerant people, but humans will be humans and idiots will be idiots ... my cousin, also living in the Netherlands, is taking off his German license plate off his car and parking it deep inside an underground garage ...