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Fool's cap   /fulz kæp/   Listen
noun
Fool  n.  
1.
One destitute of reason, or of the common powers of understanding; an idiot; a natural.
2.
A person deficient in intellect; one who acts absurdly, or pursues a course contrary to the dictates of wisdom; one without judgment; a simpleton; a dolt. " Extol not riches, then, the toil of fools." " Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other."
3.
(Script.) One who acts contrary to moral and religious wisdom; a wicked person. " The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."
4.
One who counterfeits folly; a professional jester or buffoon; a retainer formerly kept to make sport, dressed fantastically in motley, with ridiculous accouterments. " Can they think me... their fool or jester?"
April fool, Court fool, etc. See under April, Court, etc.
Fool's cap, a cap or hood to which bells were usually attached, formerly worn by professional jesters.
Fool's errand, an unreasonable, silly, profitless adventure or undertaking.
Fool's gold, iron or copper pyrites, resembling gold in color.
Fool's paradise, a name applied to a limbo (see under Limbo) popularly believed to be the region of vanity and nonsense. Hence, any foolish pleasure or condition of vain self-satistaction.
Fool's parsley (Bot.), an annual umbelliferous plant (Aethusa Cynapium) resembling parsley, but nauseous and poisonous.
To make a fool of, to render ridiculous; to outwit; to shame. (Colloq.)
To play the fool, to act foolishly; to act the buffoon; to act a foolish part. "I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fool's cap" Quotes from Famous Books



... inconceivable to any modern, would they have reserved for an aesthetic type and movement which violated morality and did not even find pleasure, which outraged sanity and could not attain to exuberance, which contented itself with the fool's cap ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... sincerity and to help forward any absurd "dressing-up" amusement that the children might take into their minds. But the young savage has a keen sense of the ludicrous. His Majesty the King swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw his head crowned with the staring horror of a fool's cap—a thing which his father would rend to pieces if it ever came into his office. He plucked it off, and ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... wanton city dame. Amid all these, and more acceptable than almost the whole put together, was the all-licensed fool, the Gracioso of the Spanish drama, who, with his cap fashioned into the resemblance of a coxcomb, and his bauble, a truncheon terminated by a carved figure wearing a fool's cap, in his hand, went, came, and returned, mingling in every scene of the piece, and interrupting the business, without having any share himself in the action, and ever and anon transferring his gibes from the actors on the stage to the audience who sate ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Entrance to Bamboozlem, and was published by Humphrey shortly afterwards. The queen is represented at the head of a procession, all the members of which (herself included) are mounted on braying "jackasses." A figure, intended no doubt for Alderman Wood, habited in a fool's cap and jester's dress, holds her by the hand; the lady who follows him, playing on the fiddle and wearing a Scotch bonnet, is meant for Lady Ann Hamilton (she is named "Lady Ann Bagpipe" in the sketch); Bergami (immediately behind) carries a banner inscribed ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... pray!' was repeated, with another strangely pleasant contortion of countenance. But I still answered—'No, indeed—I should not forgive him, till I had made him truly sensible of his fault.' On which he rose from his knees, pulled out a paper fool's cap, which he had been carving and fashioning for himself, fixed it on his head, and placed himself, with a new kind of penitential countenance, in a corner; continuing such quaint mimickry, of a child in sorrow, that there was no resisting ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... an intelligent dog with a rustling paper ruffle tied round his tail, paper shoes on, and a fool's cap on his head? and as everybody laughed at him, and he knew they were doing so, do you remember his reproachful look of helpless, indignant protest against being made to appear ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... mouth open, and grasping in his hands a huge folio, while Davie Gellatly, with cap and bells, stood mincing and grimacing behind him—now rolling up the whites of his eyes—now pulling the skirts of the unconscious pedagogue—and finally, surmounting the wig of the Dominie with his own fool's cap, he clapped his hands, gayly crying, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... long to mention here, I must confess myself to be an Enemy also to all ludicrous Epilogues and Farcical Pieces, at the End of Tragedies; and must think them full as ridiculous as if we were to dress a Monarch in all his Royal Robes, and then put a Fool's Cap upon him. ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous



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