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Foil   /fɔɪl/   Listen
Foil

noun
1.
A piece of thin and flexible sheet metal.
2.
Anything that serves by contrast to call attention to another thing's good qualities.  Synonym: enhancer.
3.
A device consisting of a flat or curved piece (as a metal plate) so that its surface reacts to the water it is passing through.  Synonym: hydrofoil.
4.
Picture consisting of a positive photograph or drawing on a transparent base; viewed with a projector.  Synonym: transparency.
5.
A light slender flexible sword tipped by a button.
verb
(past & past part. foiled; pres. part. foiling)
1.
Enhance by contrast.
2.
Hinder or prevent (the efforts, plans, or desires) of.  Synonyms: baffle, bilk, cross, frustrate, queer, scotch, spoil, thwart.  "Foil your opponent"
3.
Cover or back with foil.



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"Foil" Quotes from Famous Books



... for my vain opposition. You are ingenious, Loredano, in Your modes of vengeance, nay, poetical, A very Ovid in the art of hating; 'Tis thus (although a secondary object, Yet hate has microscopic eyes), to you I owe, by way of foil to the more zealous, This undesired association ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... mercury on a tin foil, smoothly laid on a flat table, and rub it gently with a hare's foot. It soon unites itself to the tin, which then becomes very splendid, or is what they call quickened. A plate of glass is then cautiously, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... against brute force. We see him, now, a frail, inspired Shelleyan[15] democrat, pleading the Guelph cause before the great Ghibelline soldier Salinguerra,—as he had once pitted the young might of native song against the accomplished Troubadour Eglamor. Salinguerra is the foil of the political, as Eglamor of the literary, Sordello, and the dramatic interest of the whole poem focusses in those two scenes. He had enough of the lonely inspiration of genius to vanquish the craftsman, but too little of its large humanity to cope with the astute ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... his stomach will retain, he is driven to the conviction that there is something wrong, and that he had better see the doctor. The result of the young athlete's visit to the doctor was that he mournfully laid down the dumb-bells and the foil, eschewed gymnastics, and ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... in the highest form. It is of no use to ape it or to contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance, and of persistence, and of creation, to this power, which will foil ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson


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