Word.ws English Dictionary

foolery

/ˈfuːləɹi/

foolery noun: foolish behaviour or speech.

Noun

foolery (countable and uncountable, plural fooleries)

  1. Foolish behaviour or speech.
    • So from that tyme forwarde I began to ſmell the word of god, and forſoke the ſchole doctors and ſuch foolries.1552, Hughe Latymer [i.e., Hugh Latimer], Augustine Bernher, compiler, “[The First Sermon]”, in Certayn Godly Sermons, Made uppon the Lords Prayer, […], London: […] John Day, […], published 1562...
    • Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines every where.c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
    Synonyms:
    foolishness

foolery meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

foolery in Tamil

கோந்திக்குணம்

foolery in Malayalam

fooling, clowning, tomfoolery
വിഡ്ഢിത്തം, ഭോഷ്ക്, പളക്, അമസം, അശട്, മണ്ടത്തരം

Examples of foolery in a sentence

  • Though you think, maybe, young men can do their fill of foolery and there is none to blame them.1910, John Millington Synge, “Deirdre of the Sorrows”, in Plays by John M. Synge, London: George Allen & Unwin, act I, page 319:
  • He […] hurried off to the Centre, took part in the solemn foolery of a 'discussion group' […]1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 2, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC...

Synonyms of foolery

Forms of foolery

pluralfooleries

Origin of foolery

From Middle English foleri, ffollery, equivalent to fool + -ery.

Words formed from foolery

Questions about foolery

What does foolery mean?
Foolery means foolish behaviour or speech.
What is foolery in Tamil?
Foolery in Tamil is கோந்திக்குணம். See Foolery meaning in Tamil.
How do you use foolery in a sentence?
Though you think, maybe, young men can do their fill of foolery and there is none to blame them.
What part of speech is foolery?
Foolery is a noun.
How do you pronounce foolery?
Foolery is pronounced /ˈfuːləɹi/.
What is the plural of foolery?
The plural of foolery is fooleries.

Words near foolery in the dictionary

  1. foolee
  2. foolees
  3. fooler
  4. fooleries
  5. foolers
  6. foolery
  7. fooles
  8. fooless
  9. foolesses
  10. foolest
  11. fooleth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foolery (page history and authors); foolery (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); foolery (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-foolery.wav.

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