Word.ws English Dictionary

foole

foole is the archaic spelling of fool.

Meaning of fool

Noun

fool (plural fools)

  1. (derogatory) A person with poor judgment or little intelligence.
    • You were a fool to cross that busy road without looking.
  2. (historical) A jester; a person whose role was to entertain a sovereign and the court (or lower personages).
    • This court fool could say bright things on occasion, but his main use to the ladies and lords of the palace was to serve as victim to practical jokes, cruel, coarse, and vulgar enough to be appreciated perhaps in the Bowery.1896, Frederick Peterson IN Popular Science Monthly Volume 50 December 1896 , Idiots Savants
    Synonyms:
    jester, joker
  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.
    • Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
      ⁠All night below the darken’d eyes;
      ⁠With morning wakes the will, and cries,
      ‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto IV”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    dupe, mark, goat
  5. (informal) Someone who derives pleasure from something specified.
    • Can they think me […] their fool or jester?1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […]”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    fan
  6. (slang, chiefly African-American Vernacular) An informal greeting akin to buddy, dude, or man.
    • Upon opening the door, Trech was suddenly drawn aback by the shocking presence of the armed goon standing directly in front of him. “Yo, what up fool? […]”2010, G.C. Deuce, From the Gutter to the Grave: An American Hood Novel, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 291

See all 13 meanings of fool

Forms of foole

pluralfooles

Questions about foole

What is foole the archaic spelling of?
Foole is the archaic spelling of fool.

Words near foole in the dictionary

  1. foolability
  2. foolable
  3. Foolah
  4. Foolahs
  5. fooldom
  6. foole
  7. fooled
  8. fooled about
  9. fooled along
  10. fooled around
  11. fooled away

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foole (page history and authors); fool (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “foole.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/foole. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.