Other forms: simpletons
A simpleton is somebody foolish and easily fooled. Taken for a simpleton, a village simpleton, treat him like a simpleton.
It is old-fashioned and belongs to fairy tales and older novels, where the simpleton often turns out to be the one who wins. It is built like a surname, with the -ton ending of a place name attached to simple as a joke.
1nounsimpletonSomebody who is foolish and easily fooled.
“The con man treated the old farmer like a simpleton, but the farmer was cleverer than he looked.”
simpleton is an insult.
Simple plus -ton, on the pattern of a surname, recorded from the seventeenth century.
Proto-Indo-European
*sem-
Middle English
symple
English
simple
English, today
simpleton
Built from
From simple + -ton. (as in a surname). Compare French simplet, Italian semplicione. simple comes from Middle English symple. Middle English symple, from Old French simple, from Latin simplex (“simple”) literally “onefold” (as opposed to duplex (“double”) literally “twofold”), from semel (“the same”) + plicō (“to fold”). See same and fold. Compare single, singular, simultaneous, etc. Partially displaced native English onefold.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA