foolhardy
Syllables: fool·har·dyUK/ˈfuːlhɑːdi//ˈfulˌhɑɹdi/
foolhardy adjective: marked by unthinking recklessness with disregard for danger; boldly rash; hotheaded.
Adjective
foolhardy (comparative foolhardier or more foolhardy, superlative foolhardiest or most foolhardy)
- Marked by unthinking recklessness with disregard for danger; boldly rash; hotheaded.
- The master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. The buzz of study ceased. The pupils wondered if this fool-hardy boy had lost his mind.1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter VI, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 68
- In the middle distance several foolhardy souls in wet suits were surfing toward some foamy outbursts on the rocky headland; nearer in, a scattering of paddlers was being continually and, it seemed, happily engulfed by explosive waves.2000, Bill Bryson, chapter 1, in In a Sunburned Country, 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Broadway Books, →ISBN, page 14
Noun
foolhardy (plural foolhardies)
- A person who is foolhardy.
- Resentful of the saddle-fast stranger, eight foolhardies return for more adventure.1977, Rolf R. Mueller, Festival and Fiction in Heinrich Wittenwiler's Ring, page 26
- Some foolhardies in the schoolhouse laughed at him then and Griff stuck their heads into toilets, one by one over the next week.2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys
foolhardy meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
foolhardy in Hindi
- foolhardy, fearless
- अक्खड़ akkhaṛ
foolhardy in Urdu
- بےپرواہ, جلد باز
foolhardy in Bengali
- দুঃসাহসী, অবিবেচকের মতো সাহসী, হঠকারী
foolhardy in Malayalam
- impulsive, reckless, rash
- വ്യാമൂഢമായ, മുഠാളത്തരമായ, ആലോചനാശൂന്യമായ, വിണ്ടുവിചാരമില്ലാത്ത, വിവേകമില്ലാത്ത, വകതിരിവില്ലാത്ത
More languagesFewer languages
- foolhardy in Kannada
- ಹುಚ್ಚು ಸಾಹಸದ, ಅವಿವೇಕದ
- foolhardy in Indonesian
- nekat
Examples of foolhardy in a sentence
- Sometimes people glibly speak as if the Dead Hand were a thing of the past, but it is foolhardy to assume so.
- Sometimes the heroes were foolhardy enough to try taking on the Mummy fistwise.
- It was a foolhardy, ill-conceived, dilettantly prepared defensive; it was a typical adventure.
Synonyms of foolhardy
Forms of foolhardy
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | foolhardier |
| comparative | more foolhardy |
| superlative | foolhardiest |
| superlative | most foolhardy |
| alternative form | fool-hardy |
| Noun | |
| plural | foolhardies |
Origin of foolhardy
From Middle English folehardy, foolhardi, folherdi, from Old French fol hardi (“foolishly bold”), from Old French fol (“foolish, silly; insane, mad”) (from Latin follis (“bellows; purse, sack; inflated ball; belly, paunch”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ- (“to swell”)) + Old French hardi (“durable, hardy, tough”) (past tense of hardir (“to harden”), from the unattested Frankish *hartjan, from Proto-Germanic *harduz (“hard; brave”)), equivalent to fool + hardy. Compare fool-bold, fool-large, etc.
Words formed from foolhardy
Questions about foolhardy
- What does foolhardy mean?
- Foolhardy means marked by unthinking recklessness with disregard for danger; boldly rash; hotheaded.
- What is foolhardy in Hindi?
- Foolhardy in Hindi is अक्खड़ (akkhaṛ). See Foolhardy meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is foolhardy?
- Foolhardy can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce foolhardy?
- Foolhardy is pronounced /ˈfuːlhɑːdi/ (UK).
Words near foolhardy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: foolhardy (page history and authors); अक्खड़ (Hindi) (page history and authors); foolhardy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Foolhardy (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); foolhardy (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); foolhardy (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-foolhardy.ogg, en-au-foolhardy.ogg.
Cite this entry: “foolhardy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/foolhardy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.