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folly

UK/ˈfɒli/US/ˈfɑli/
nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,014 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: follies

Folly is foolishness, or a costly foolish act. Sheer folly, the folly of the plan, a garden folly.

A folly in a landscape is a real architectural category, a building put up for effect with no use at all, and eighteenth-century England is covered in them. In the abstract it is stronger than a mistake, since folly should have been obvious.

Newton2 at English Wikipedia · CC BY 2.5

Definitions of folly

  1. 1nounfollyFoolishness, or a costly foolish act.B2+

    “Building a house so close to the edge of the cliff was sheer folly.”

folly is a foolishness.

Where it comes from

Old French folie means madness, from fol, mad.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *bʰelǵʰ-

  2. Old French

    folie — madness

  3. Middle English

    folie

  4. English, today

    folly

Built from

  • fol · Old French — mad, insane

Middle English folie, from Old French folie (“madness”), from the adjective fol (“mad, insane”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

folly in the wild

  • In English, the term began as "a popular name for any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder", the Oxford English Dictionary's definition.

    Folly

  • The title is taken from the line by Thomas Gray "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise".

    Folly to Be Wise

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.