What's the difference between foolish and simpleton?

Foolish


Definition:

  • (a.) Marked with, or exhibiting, folly; void of understanding; weak in intellect; without judgment or discretion; silly; unwise.
  • (a.) Such as a fool would do; proceeding from weakness of mind or silliness; exhibiting a want of judgment or discretion; as, a foolish act.
  • (a.) Absurd; ridiculous; despicable; contemptible.

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”.

Simpleton


Definition:

  • (n.) A person of weak intellect; a silly person.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Reading your post I couldn't help but think tonight's simpletons had undergone a similar experience."
  • (2) But these simpletons are absolutely determined to find their seat.
  • (3) There’s a really big willingness to help here in Germany and a mind-boggling number of people that are doing lots for refugees, who are not racist, and I think it’s their voice that should be dominant rather than a handful of simpletons who think they should stir up hatred.” This article was amended on 7 August 2015 to correct the name of the news programme on which Reschke made her comments
  • (4) Maybe because I am a simpleton and sometimes can only process what I can see – the actual sky, rather than invisible cyberspace in which data blips through fibre-optic cables.
  • (5) George W. Bush was a Texan simpleton who took more time playing golf on his computer than deciding on executions while governor.
  • (6) Responses to Doyle’s tweet included one from another Twitter user who asked : “What has a Muslim woman in Croydon, got to do with the horrific events in Belgium, you simpleton?” Another, referring to the far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik, asked : “Did anyone accost you on the streets of Croydon after the Brevik shooting in Norway?
  • (7) Which is also to say, for younger visitors, that the exhibition could even be seen to reduce Diana to the big-spending simpleton who was castigated in Anthony O’Hear’s revisionist essay of 1998, as shallow and self-obsessed.
  • (8) He is by no means the simpleton played by Peter Sellers in Being There, but, like Gardiner, every utterance, however gnomic, is now thought to contain a greater truth.
  • (9) And Navracsics’ hastily put together statement from yesterday seems to only repeat the same category error, a simpleton bureaucrat mantra trying to dodge the absurdity of the EU apparently having no responsibility to give any support to the EU’s own youth orchestra.
  • (10) These use the character of Lennie, the gentle simpleton who doesn't know his own strength from Steinbeck's 1937 novel Of Mice and Men, as a benchmark, with the court writing: "Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt" .
  • (11) "I was a simpleton last Saturday evening at Melbourne Park."
  • (12) My husband is pointing out, veeerrryy slowly, as if to a simpleton, that this would involve us trebling our current mortgage.
  • (13) A dverts for insurance comparison websites have long treated the British public like a shower of infantilised simpletons.
  • (14) Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson rapped over "special needs" joke This time it's media regulator Ofcom tut-tutting after Clarkson describes the Ferrari F430 Speciale as "a bit wrong ... that smiling front end ... it looked like a simpleton ... [it] should have been called the 430 Speciale Needs".
  • (15) I liked the idea of an island with a vocation – all islands should have one, surely – and Tico took great pleasure in instructing me in the difference between primary and secondary Atlantic rainforest (simpleton that I am, I thought all forest was good, but Tico tut-tutted every time we passed a coconut palm), and even more pleasure in skipping up the 990m Pico do Papagaio while I lumbered behind.

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