foolhardy
English
WOTD – 12 November 2017
Etymology
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.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈfuːlhɑːdi/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈfulˌhɑɹdi/
Audio (GA) (file) Audio (AU) (file) - Hyphenation: fool‧har‧dy
Adjective
foolhardy (comparative foolhardier or more foolhardy, superlative foolhardiest or most foolhardy)
- Marked by unthinking recklessness with disregard for danger; boldly rash; hotheaded.
- 1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Monkes Prologue”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], OCLC 230972125; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: Printed by [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, OCLC 932884868, folio lxxxix, verso, column 1:
- 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter VI, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, OCLC 1000326417, page 68:
- 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.
- 2000, Bill Bryson, chapter 1, in In a Sunburned Country, 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Broadway Books, →ISBN, page 14:
- 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.
- 2017 March 26, “The Observer view on triggering article 50: As Britain hurtles towards the precipice, truth and democracy are in short supply”, in The Observer, London, archived from the original on 30 August 2017:
- It is a reckless, foolhardy leap into the unknown and the prelude, perhaps, to what the existentialist writer Albert Camus described in La chute – a fall from grace, in every conceivable sense.
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Derived terms
- foolhardice (obsolete)
- foolhardihood (obsolete)
- foolhardily
- foolhardiness
Translations
marked by unthinking recklessness with disregard for danger
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Middle English
References
- “fol-hardi (adj.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 21 June 2018.
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