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Daft   /dæft/   Listen
Daft

adjective
1.
Informal or slang terms for mentally irregular.  Synonyms: around the bend, balmy, barmy, bats, batty, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crackers, dotty, fruity, haywire, kookie, kooky, loco, loony, loopy, nuts, nutty, round the bend, wacky, whacky.



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"Daft" Quotes from Famous Books



... of his patron, the pilgrim was roused from a fit of reverie by the well-remembered greeting of the jester, Humphry Lathom, or "Daft Humpy," ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... Is the lad gane daft? God has gien to some men wisdom and understanding, to ithers the art o' playing on the fiddle and painting pictures. There shall be no painting, fiddling Crawford among ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... rubbish and cussing. The pore fule's daft wid the hate and the dust and the welt I give him. Shure it's the way I have to be ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... sigh did he gie; He mounted his mare—he rade cannily; And aften he thought, as he gaed through the glen, She 's daft to refuse ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Falls to preach there. A mile out of town he had been accosted by a big, bearded man who had yet a singularly childish look—who urged that he come to his cabin to minister to a sick friend. He knew the fellow for one that the village of Edom called "daft" or "queer," yet held to be harmless—to be rather amusing, indeed, since he could be provoked to deliver curious harangues upon the subject of revealed religion. He remembered now that the man's face had stared at him from far back in the church the night before—a face full of the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... must be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know it. Do you suppose I believed that a man at your time of life, brought up as you have been, had suddenly gone daft on this ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... least—no, you were not there; but those looking on must have seen me get ahead of him within view of the starting-point; soon after that I lost sight of him. The river winds, you know; and of course I thought he was coming on behind me. Very daft of me, not to divine that the boat ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Hank Kildare, as he leaped up from the couch on which he had been reclining lazily. "What derned fool is punchin' away at thet thar button like he hed gone clean daft! Hyar ther ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... exclaimed, "tha wants tha young yed knocked off, Tummas Hibblethwaite. He's fair daft about th' young gentleman as—as was killed. He axes questions mony a day till I'd give him th' stick if he wasna a cripple. He ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... your head when you fell out of the wagon, Robert, and are a little daft. There's ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... of the passengers who had escaped serious hurt, but for the most part these persons seemed to have gone daft from terror and shock. Some were running aimlessly up and down and some, a few, were pecking feebly with improvised tools at the wreck, an indescribable jumble of ruin, from which there issued cries of mortal agony, and from which, at a point where two locomotives were lying on their sides, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... they were at the mouth of the harbor that something occurred which seemed likely to turn this fine setting out into ridicule. This was Daft Sandy (a half-witted old man to whom Robert MacNicol had been kind), who rowed his boat right across the course of the Mary of Argyle, and, as she came up, called ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... come over you, Peter Roney?" she exclaimed. "Are you daft? Don't make such a noise! You'll wake the young ones, and I don't want them waked till need be, with no Christmas ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... 'She's been daft for gi'ein' pah-ties since ever I can mind,' Mr. Robinson put in, 'an' the Kaiser hissel' couldna stop her, Still, Macgreegor, she's an auld frien', an' it wud be a peety to offend her. Ye'll be mair at hame there nor ye was at yer Aunt Purdie's swell affair. Dod, Lizzie, thon was a gorgeous ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell

... my room in the garret I've heard his futsteps comin' and gangin', comin' and gangin' doon one passage and up anither frae midnight till cockcraw. It was weary wark to lie listenin' tae his clatter and wonderin' whether he was clean daft, or whether maybe he'd lairnt pagan and idolatrous tricks oot in India, and that his conscience noo was like the worm which gnaweth and dieth not. I'd ha' speered frae him whether it wouldna ease him ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to act promptly. They informed Lot that they intended to destroy the place because of its sin, and told him to gather all his family together and leave at once. Lot spoke to his "sons-in-law, which married his daughters," but they appear to have thought him daft. Early in the morning "the angels hastened Lot" who still lingered. They laid hold of his hand, his wife's, and his two unmarried daughters', led them outside the city, and said, "Escape now for thy life; look not behind thee, neither ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... Partly the whirl by night and day, I suppose, is my bane; still more, the endless meeting of fresh and fresh small talk, with the fatigue of listening, and the impression on my brain of miscellaneous memories when I ought to sleep. In Oxford, from like causes, I became as it were 'daft,' and from forgetfulness of the right words could not complete an English sentence. A like affection came on me in London last summer, and I had to break away suddenly, to the disappointment of friends, because my own sense of idiotcy ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... the hunter where he lounged against the window, a figure straight and lithe as an Indian, not tall, but gifted with a pantherish grace, and breathing a certain tawny brightness as of sunshine through pine needles. "You're daft!" he said; then after ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... the younger of Germinie's sisters took her to the Rue Saint-Martin, to the house of a repairer of cashmere shawls, with whom she lodged, and who, being almost daft on the subject of religion, was banner-bearer in a sisterhood of the Virgin. She made her lie beside her on a mattress on the floor, and having her there under her hand all night, she vented upon her all her long-standing, venomous jealousy, her bitter ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... a hearty laugh he laughed, 'Just come wi' me, I beg.' MacFierce'un saw with pleasure daft ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... once— a boy. But it must have died when a baby, soon after Mrs. Darley did. And now do you know why I do not want you to come here with stories of riches for Maurice Darley? He's daft on the subject already. I do not want him to go so far that they will take him ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... there in a crump-hole a kiltie I saw: "Whit ails ye, ma lad? Are ye woundit?" says I. "I've lost ma wee whustle," says Sandy McGraw. "'Twas oot by yon bing where we pressed the attack, It drapped frae ma pooch, and between noo and dawn There isna much time so I'm jist crawlin' back. . . ." "Ye're daft, man!" I telt him, but Sandy ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... have my ain thoughts. I fear me, indeed, to say what I have found, and what I am suspecting, for ye hae reason to conclude that my head is full o' plots, and that broodin' ower treachery has made me daft." ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... woman looked fondly at her boy. "Ask her, then, Jamie; ask her, and give her the chance. She's a daft creature, but bonny; and you love ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... we can do it; yet I have only one indisputable fact for a starter. That is why I want you to tell me whether I'm growing daft or simply adventurous. Mr. Gryce, I don't trust Brotherson. He has pulled the wool over Dr. Heath's eyes and almost over those of Mr. Challoner. But he can't pull it over mine. Though he should tell a story ten times more plausible than the one with which ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... manor house seems to be a favourite hunting-ground of the otter during his nocturnal rambles; for sometimes one is awakened at night by a tremendous tumult among the wild duck and moorhens that haunt the pool. They rush up and down, screaming and flapping their wings as if they were "daft." ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... "They say you was off your head when you did it. How can I tell you're right in your intellecks now? You see, 'twould be mighty unpleasant to have anything happen to either Puttenham or me, if we crossed you in any way. I don't feel inclined to risk it. I mind when owd Sammy Drewitt was daft. They did up a sort of a black hole, and stuck he in, and fed him through a kind of a winder in the side, and they had the place cleaned out once a month, and fresh straw littered for him to lie ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... outshines; The lily in her breast its beauty tines; Her legs, her arms, her cheeks, her mouth, her een, Will be my dead, that will be shortly seen! For Pate looes her—waes me!—and she looes Pate And I with Neps, by some unlucky fate, Made a daft vow. O, but ane be a beast, That makes rash aiths till he's afore the priest! I darna speak my mind, else a' the three, But doubt, wad prove ilk ane my enemy. 'Tis sair to thole;—I'll try some witchcraft art, To break with ane, and win the other's heart. Here Mausy lives, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... kinds of humanities just the same. Our knowledge of any one is a mere accident in the claim, and can at most only make us feel it more. But recognition of Amy showed his crime more heinous. It brought back to Mr. Raymount's mind the vision of the bright girl he used to watch in her daft and cheerful service, and with that vision came the conviction that not she but Corney must be primarily to blame: he had twice struck the woman his son had grievously wronged! He must make to her whatever atonement was possible—first for having brought the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... of various kinds put on in varied modes. The most practicable of these is a system prepared by Daft. Most iron vessels are now constructed by every other plate lapping the edges of the one between. He proposes, instead of having the plates all the same width, to have one wide and one very narrow plate. This would leave a trough between the two wide plates of the depth of the thickness of the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... Most of that daft night-running will always be blank in Christopher's mind; moments and moments, like islands of clarity, remain. He brings back one vivid interval when he found himself seated on his father's gravestone among the whispering grasses, staring down into the pallid bowl of the world. And in that ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... dear! ye'll think me daft to talk thus; but we men of Stair go gyte in these affairs. 'Tis love at first sight with us, or none at all; but if ye'll have me, I'll make ye Lady Stair; and what's far more, I'll try to make you a happy woman the ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... and continually worrying the men we had shepherding. One of these was rather daft. One night the rams did not return. I got on their tracks the next day and brought them to camp, but there was no sign of the shepherd. Two evenings after we were surprised to see a couple of Myalls bringing in the lost man. We gave ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... wicked wit; Are thy works, thy fame livin' yet? Will thae daft people never quit An ne'er ha'e done Disturbin' me in my black ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... daft ef ye didn't stay away," remarked the Kentucky sheriff with a sharp and bellicose glance at his colleague from another state. "Virginny officers hain't got no ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... daft, Lord Malcolm,' replied the Squire, retaining his hold on the boy's bridle; 'what, rin your head into the wolf's mouth again, when we've barely brought you ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Lamoine were somewhat suspicious of their recruit at first, but he went on industriously with his task, and made no attempt to communicate with anybody. They soon saw that he was an expert workman, and a quiet, innocent, half-daft, harmless creature, so he was given other things to do, such as cleaning up their rooms and going errands for beer and ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... off with speed across the bridge to High Street. Mr. Traill struggled back to his shop, against wind and treacherous ice, thinking what kind of a bed might be contrived for the sick man for the night. In the morning the daft auld body could be hurried, willy-nilly, to a bed in the infirmary. As for wee ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... lowerin dreary, The sun he wadna raise his heid, The win' blew laich and eerie. In's pooch he had a plack or twa— I vow he hadna mony, Yet Andrew like a linty sang, For Lizzie was sae bonny! O Lizzie, Lizzie, bonny lassie! Bonny, saucy hizzy! What richt had ye to luik at me And drive me daft and dizzy? ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... shouted Mr Macdougall, when he had recovered from the surprise which the unexpected order of the boatswain, so rapidly carried out, had caused. "Are ye gone clean daft?" ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... her," said Andrew contemptuously. "She always thocht the callant had a bee in her bonnet. She's gane daft ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk—(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)—but drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was fou, but he was never out o' gude humor." ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Have you any notion that he will be the more or the less likely to do so when he learns that there's a French gentleman of your make in the country-side, and a friend of Doom's, too, which means a Jacobite? A daft errand, if I may say it; seeking a needle in a haystack was bairn's ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... Royal, where they laughed at his scrooging bushy eyebrows, fierce black eyes and his deadly-in-earnest denunciation of all humbugs and imposters, he returned to the aforesaid van, let down the flaps, buttoned the daft and "feekle" world out, and himself in, and then retired some more and slept, as I have said, rolled in his blankets and overcoats on a bed ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... he did live, and thrive too; and he's the most life-like of the two to-day, I'm thinking. Fatigue, indeed! and he ranging over the hills with that daft laddie Davie Graham, and playing at the ball by the hour together! What should ail him, ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson

... of Pittendurie, the marriage of Andrew Binnie and Sophy Traill was a fact beyond disputing. Some said "it was the right thing," and more said "it was the foolish thing," and among the latter was Andrew's mother; though as yet she had said it very cautiously to Andrew, whom she regarded as "clean daft and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... said, going closer, "it will be brave weather on Solwayside the noo. I mind when it would hae driven me out to play amang the wreaths like a daft year-auld collie—. Aye, and I am no sure that I wad not like a turn the noo—not o' that saft stuff that will melt and be gane the morn's mornin', but the fine kind that sifts up your sleeve and down your neck!—But for the puir herds on the hill, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... a burst of cheers and whistling and tossing of hats from every ship in the fleet that it seemed as if every officer and sailor in Sampson's squadron had suddenly gone daft. Like wildfire, the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... talk to me about wiring or telegraphing or mailing. I have been doing that for nearly a week, until I am nearly gone daft. Of course I could get the regular fake, or barn-stormers or turkey companies—you know 'em—but none of 'em for me. I want companies I ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... from him o'er the plain, And now with spreading wings it comes again, With maddened fury; fierce its eyeballs glare. It rides upon the monarch's pointed spear; The scales the point have turned, and broke the haft. Then as a pouncing hawk when sailing daft, In swiftest flight o'er him drops from the skies, But from the gleaming sword it quickly flies. Three hundred warriors now nearer drew To the fierce monster, which toward them flew; Into their midst the monster furious rushed, And through their solid ranks resistless pushed To slay Heabani, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... delightful little surprises upon them, just where the road looked blocked! The trouble is that I've no gift for organised charity. I have a pretty middling strong will of my own ("pigheadedness" Aunt Emmeline calls it!) and committees drive me daft. They may be useful things in their way, but it's not my way. I want to get to work on my own, and not to sit talk, talk, talking over every miserable, piffling little detail. No! If I play fairy, I must at least be free to wave my own wand, and to find my own niche where I can wave ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... is the King thy sire and who is Nur al-Nihar, the daughter of thine uncle. I have full knowledge of all concerning thyself and thy kith and kin; how thou art one of three brothers who all and each were daft for love of Princess Nur al-Nihar and strave to win her from one another to wife. Furthermore thy sire deemed it best to send you all far and wide over foreign lands, and thou faredest to far Samarkand and broughtest back a Magical Apple made with rare art and mystery ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the movement, that, though the fall of the cord was the simplest thing in the world, a visible quiver passed through the bowed ranks of the bearers. "It was his ain boy Wattie come to lay his faither's heid i' the grave!" cried Daft Jess, the parish "natural," in a loud sudden voice from the "thruch" stone near the kirkyaird wall ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... as a hare, poor fellow, And should be in chains," you say. I haven't a doubt of your statement, But who isn't mad, I pray? Why, the world is a great asylum, And people are all insane, Gone daft with pleasure or folly, Or ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... would not give her up to him with the good grace of a man, Mackenzie said, smiling and smiling like a daft musician, he would take her from both of them and ride away with her into the valleys of the world which she was so hungry in her young heart ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... it's no twenty years," said the landlady. "It's no abune seventeen in this very month. It made an unco noise ower a' this country. The bairn disappeared the very day that Supervisor Kennedy came by his end. He was a daft dog! Oh, an' he could ha' handen' off the smugglers! Ye see, sir, there was a king's sloop down in Wigton Bay, and Frank Kennedy, he behoved to have her up to chase Dirk Hatteraick's lugger. He was a daring cheild, and fought his ship ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... ma'am," replied the cheerful Marthy over her shoulder, as she toiled up the stairs, with Virginia and little Lucy noiselessly following. "I've undressed him and I was obliged to hide his clothes to keep him from putting 'em on again. He's near daft ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... ain guid man, ye daft fule!" exclaimed Rose Cameron, in a rage. "Wha else suld I bide wi'? And noo, ye'll speer nae mair questions anent my ain preevit life, for I'll nae answer any sic. A woman maunna gie testimony in open coort against ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... Mrs. Halfpenny at the same time, 'ye're daft! Gae doon canny, and keep your apron on, for if I see a stain on ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the man must have been clean daft to have trusted himself to one of those savage beasts of the country," said Mr. Buchanan. "And he was no so young either—about sixty, I should say. It didna look even respectable, I remember, when we met him the other ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... the Angouleme aristocracy in 1821. He frequented the Bargeton receptions. An artist like his friend Bartas, he also was daft over drawing and would ruin every album in the department with his grotesque productions. He posed as Mme. de Bartas' lover, since Bartas paid court to Mme. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... in business at Louisville, early in the century; but in 1812, he failed in this venture, and moved to Henderson, where his neighbors thought him a trifle daft,—and certainly he was a ne'er-do-well, wandering around the woods, with hair hanging down on his shoulders, a far-away look in his eyes, and communing with the birds. In 1818, the botanist Rafinesque, on the first of his several tramps down the Ohio valley,—he had ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... speaking with gravity). I ken it fine, Lizzie; an' it's no easy for a man who has been respeckit an' lookit up to a' his life to be thought daft at eighty-three; but the most important thing in life is to get ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... pulpit aboard that they were taking down to Mazatlan for some chapel or other, and this here pulpit was lashed on deck aft. Well, Billy had been most kinds of a fool in his life, and among others a play-actor; called himself Gaston Maundeville, and was clean daft on his knowledge of Shakespeare and his own power of interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines. I ain't never going to forgit the day he gave us Portia's speech. We were just under the tropic, and the day was a scorcher. There was mostly men folk aboard, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... that he was the happiest of men. In the next he cursed himself as the most wretched. And so alternately smiling and cursing, he wandered about the village during those last days of January like one daft, too much absorbed in the inward struggle to be more than ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... delight in flowers was a scandal in Thrums, where she would stand her ground if the roughest boy approached her with roses in his hand, and she gave money for them, which was one reason why the people thought her daft. She was tending her flowers now with experienced eye, smelling them daintily, and every time she touched ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... his purple vestments. His face had not changed, and, as he never knew he was dying, it showed no pain or fear. It was Amory's dear old friend, his and the others'—for the church was full of people with daft, staring faces, the most exalted seeming ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... plausible, deceived hundreds of abler men than himself." Surely there is something very faulty in the position you assume here. If what you say be so, how do you know that you are not yourself the victim of deception at the hands of some inferior? Or is it only men who have "gone daft on Single Tax" that possess the extraordinary power of leading abler men than themselves by the nose? Surely that were too much honor for an antagonist to concede to them. More surely still, if a man's intelligence is not proof against deception by inferiors in argument, he can ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... me better by now," she protested reproachfully. "I've no use at all for cheap comforts o' that kind. What's the sharpest pangs, after all, balanced against . . . the other thing? Lighter than vanity itself; an' you know it. None better. But there . . . I'm clean daft to be talking so at this stage o' the proceedings. It's the happy woman I am, sure enough. Geoff and I are rare good friends. Always have been. But don't you talk to me again about being spared. It's one more than I can stand; ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... gone daft, sweetheart? The goods of which you gave the list this morning, which have but now come in on the Golden Horn," spake up Catherine, sharply. I marvelled as I heard her whether it be ease or tenderness ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... a lilac dove This Corsair desperate and daft? Behold the conning tower above The big stern chasers pointing aft! This is not he that saved mankind With pards and pigs from tempests blind, But rather he that forged a flood, And not of water but of blood, And filled with worse than wolves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... see, man, it's defiance. There's a sair spang o' the auld sin o' the warld in you sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't; an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreights—the wind an' her are a kind of sib, I'm thinkin'—an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants, blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid thraws warstlin' the leelang nicht wi' their bit ships—weel, it comes ower me like a glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor lads; I'm wi' the sea, I'm just like ane o' her ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... looked at her as if he were half daft then, but he answered: "Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, certainly, ma'am, no danger at all, ma'am." Then he went on ordering the men: "A leetle more to the right, boys! ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... wee girls, ha, ha, ha!' at me when I was a wee lad because I was always running after the young girls and sweethearting with them. He never ran after any himself: he was always looking for birds' nests or tormenting people with his tricks. He was a daft wee fellow for devilment, was your Uncle William, and yet he's sobered down remarkably. Sometimes, I think he got more romance out of his tormenting and nesting than I got out of my courting, though love's a grand thing, John, when you can get it. I was always falling in ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... was the last happy summer that we had for many a year in the parish; and an omen of the dule that ensued, was in a sacrilegious theft that a daft woman, Jenny Gaffaw, and her idiot daughter, did in the kirk, by tearing off and stealing the green serge lining of my lord's pew, to make, as they said, a hap for their shoulders in the cold weather—saving, however, the sin, we paid no attention ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... you that bad I jest want to marry you. Guess I've loved you right along. I loved you when I picked you up in these arms nigh seven years ago. I loved you when I bandaged up that golden head o' yours. An' I've loved you—ever since. Rosie, gal, I jest don't know what I'm sayin'. How ken I? I'm daft—jest daft wi' love of you. I've tried to be honest by you. I've tried to do my duty by you—but I jest can't no longer, ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... that high-built fair demesne; So in they hurried all, maz'd, curious and keen: Save one, who look'd thereon with eye severe, And with calm-planted steps walk'd in austere; 'Twas Apollonius: something too he laugh'd, As though some knotty problem, that had daft 160 His patient thought, had now begun to thaw, And solve and melt:—'twas just as ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... laughing at her for the way she done. She's got down to little boy sweethearts. She's been making eyes at Johnny Cartwright, and the little fool—he ain't more than seventeen, eight years younger'n her—is clean daft about her. Poor old Mrs. Cartwright is awfully worried. The little scamp declares he is engaged to Carrie, and, instead of giving the report the lie, she actually seems ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... said the colonel. "I thought I was going daft. You're the first person who has heard it besides myself." He looked at Pinto. "A hell of a prospect, isn't it?" he said gloomily. "Let's ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... said that I fairly stared at her, for I had thought that she could never have quite forgiven me for the way I used to carry on. That anyone out of a daft house could have liked it, was clean beyond my understanding. I thought of how when she was reading by the door I would go up on the moor with a hazel switch and fix little clay balls at the end of ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... came to beg alms; he was a neighbour of the girls and they called him Uncle Tarrillo, bantering him upon his frequent sprees. He was utterly daft and loved to talk upon the corruption of ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... Phemie, "but she's fair off her heid. Dae ye ken she's just like a daft body. Did you see the look in her e'en?" and so they discussed poor Mag, who had drawn their attention by the strangeness of ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... housekeeper broke in, rather nervously, 'Miss Stella, dearie, you must not be angry with David; it's my fault as well as his; we only wanted to save you both worry and annoyance; and so it would, for you would never have known aught about it but for David bringing them in here. He must be daft, after my telling him he was to be sure and keep them out ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... "Daft is a little strong, Laura. But you know that I wouldn't touch this bill if it were not for the public good, and for the good of the colored race; much as I am interested in the heirs of this property, and would like to have ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... leg calf, better to suggest * For passion madded amourist better things above! Towards its lover cloth the bowl go round and run; * Cup[FN526] and cup bearer only drive us daft ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... we had lighted our pipes, "I'll tell you why I'm going to the dogs. I've got to tell it to some one or go daft; and I can't say that I'm not daft ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... labor and so many years, what did Pantagruel know? Gargantua was no bigot: he did not shut his eyes that he might not see, and he believed what his eyes told him. He saw that Pantagruel worked very hard and spent all his time at it, and yet he got no good by it. And what was worse, he was becoming daft, silly, dreamy, and besotted through it. So Pantagruel was taken away from his former masters and handed over to Ponocrates, a teacher of quite a different sort, who was bidden to take him to Paris to make a new creature of him and complete ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... equal to them, and might prove, though certainly a new, yet perhaps a stimulating, type of professor. But knowing the nature of his public reputation, especially in Edinburgh, where the recollection of his daft student days was as yet stronger than the impression made by his recent performances in literature, he was well aware that his candidature must seem paradoxical, and stood little chance of success. The election took place ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... at it wi' their proverbs till I got akinda nervish, d'ye ken. They were that terriple wyze, that, as fac's ocht, mind you, they near drave some o' the rest o's daft. ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... proposed the name of Horatio Seymour. The delegates, hushed into silence by the dominating desire to verify rumours of an impending change, now gave vent to long, excited cheering. "The folks were frantic," said an eye-witness; "the delegates daft. All other enthusiasms were as babbling brooks to the eternal thunder of Niagara. The whole mass was given over to acclaims that cannot even be suggested ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... I cannot be surprised at anything they say or do, but the joy of the father over the wee Emily was beyond anything I ever saw. To see the great bearded man taking the hour-old infant in his arms, kissing it over and over again, and speaking to it in the most daft-like language, and calling on every one to admire its beauty! No doubt the bairn had as much beauty as a thing of that age can have, but I don't think any of the men he showed it to admired it much. I know Powell, for one, when he came ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... a fine while before he will make one of his empty sacks stand upright. If he were not half daft he would have left off that job before he began it, and not have been an Irishman either. He will come to his wit's end before he sets the sack on its end. The old proverb, printed at the top, was made by a man who had burned his fingers ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... the captain, pulling himself together after his last outbreak. "The doctor is daft about him; and besides him, as I told you, there is ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... been taught to regard her with respect, and on no account to smile at anything odd in her appearance or behaviour. "Poor Miss Barnicroft" she was generally called, though Andrew spoke less politely of her as the "daft lady." ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... who was as mad about old books and first editions, as he; a stuffy, elderly thing, who had never seen Lord Mountstuart's treasures before. As both were perfectly daft on the subject, they must have kept me lying there an hour, while they fussed about from one glass-protected book-case to another, murmuring admiration of Caxtons, or discussing the value of a Mazarin Bible, with their noses ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... PODKHALYUZIN. Gone daft nothing, ma'am! But if you want to have a heart-to-heart talk, honor bright, ma'am; then here's the sort of thing it is, ma'am: at my house there's a certain Russian merchant I know, who is very much in love with Olimpiada Samsonovna, ma'am. "No matter what I have to give," says ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... reproaches, with the comparative sang-froid of one who knew that, after all, he was the only carrier on the road, and that the vicarage was five miles from the necessaries of life; 'it's a bad job, and I's not goin' to say it isn't. But ya jest look 'ere, mum, what's a man to du wi' a daft thingamy like that, as caan't teak a plain order, and spiles a poor man's business ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... sat up wi' a terrible start, an' syne I kent by the cauld 'at the door maun be open. I cried oot quick to Hendry, but he was a soond sleeper, an' he didna hear me. Ay, I dinna ken hoo I did it, but I got ben to the room an' shook him up. I was near daft with fear when I saw Leeby wasna there either. Hendry couldna tak it in a' at aince, but sune he had his trousers on, an' he made me lie down on his bed. He said he wouldna move till I did it, or I wouldna hae dune it. As sune as he was oot o' the hoose ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie

... Dyck Calhoun. "Michael," said Dyck, "things are safe enough here, but we've prepared! The overseers, bookkeepers and drivers are loyal enough. But there are others not so safe. I'm going to Salem-riding as hard as I can, with six of our best men. They're not so daft at Salem as we are, Michael. They won't know how to act or what to do. Darius Boland is a good man, but he's only had Virginian experience, and this is different. A hundred Maroons are as good as a thousand ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... capable of taking it, both the ladies must have thought, with his quick orders about the luggage and his waiting cab. Mrs Kilbannon said so. "I'm sure," she told him, "we are better off with you than with Hugh. He was always a daft dependence at a ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... Theosophy and spells her name "Alys." She always is interested in something new and advanced, and whenever I meet her I am prepared to go into ecstasies over a plan to save men's souls by electricity, or something equally speedy in the moral line. She is daft on ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... Or, "Please, Brigade, this regiment wants relieving," And "Thank you for the bombs—but why no beer?" And wondered always, with a hint of presage, Since never word emerged as it was planned, If it was Hermes, Lord of Craft, Compiled the code, or someone daft, So that no mortal could compose a message Which anybody else ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various

... part of the world to order. He is the best policeman in creation; and—he has the policeman's ethics! Talk to him about character as a basis of government or about a moral basis of government in any outlying country, he'll think you daft. Bah! what matter who governs or how he governs or where he got his authority or how, so long as he keeps order. He won't see anything else. The lesson of our dealing with Cuba is lost on him. He doesn't believe that. We may bring this Government in line with us on Mexico. But in ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... more daft every year. 'Tis strange, what charms the Widow Schmitt." Old Jimmie merely growled in his beard. "Charlie, mon," he called, "the mare is warm and weary, and so's yoursel'. Come on to town for ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill



Words linked to "Daft" :   insane



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