Word.ws English Dictionary

suffer fools gladly

suffer fools gladly verb: to be tolerant of stupidity or incompetence in other people.

Verb

suffer fools gladly (third-person singular simple present suffers fools gladly, present participle suffering fools gladly, simple past and past participle suffered fools gladly)

  1. (idiomatic) To be tolerant of stupidity or incompetence in other people.
    • For ye ſuffre foles gladly be cauſe that ye youre ſelves are wyſe.1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, 2 Corinthians xj:[19], folio ccxlv, recto
    • He [Henry Sweet] was, I believe, not in the least an illnatured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he would not suffer fools gladly.1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion. Preface.”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC, page 100

Forms of suffer fools gladly

third-person singular presentsuffers fools gladly
present participlesuffering fools gladly
past participlesuffered fools gladly
pastsuffered fools gladly
alternative formgladly suffer fools

Questions about suffer fools gladly

What does suffer fools gladly mean?
Suffer fools gladly means to be tolerant of stupidity or incompetence in other people.
What part of speech is suffer fools gladly?
Suffer fools gladly is a verb.
What is the past tense of suffer fools gladly?
The past tense of suffer fools gladly is suffered fools gladly.

Words near suffer fools gladly in the dictionary

  1. suff.
  2. suffect
  3. suffects
  4. suffer
  5. suffer by comparison
  6. suffer fools gladly
  7. suffer from
  8. suffer in silence
  9. suffer'd
  10. sufferability
  11. sufferable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: suffer fools gladly (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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