Also 7 follery. [f. FOOL sb.1 + -ERY.]
1. The habit or practice of fooling or acting foolishly.
1579. Spenser, Sheph. Cal., Feb. 211.
| But sike fancies weren foolerie, | |
| And broughten this Oake to this miserye. |
1604. Parsons, 3rd Pt. Three Convers. Eng., 271. Whether Fox may not beare away the bell for follery, in this first point of his pretended defence, I remit me to the discreet Reader; & so doth Fox remitt himselfe also.
1694. Wood, Life, 23 June (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), III. 458, note. An implacable enmity to immorality and foolery, and a zeale of discountenancing vanity, hath mov’d me now to let you know unworthiness by imposing upon a generous person, and making him a ridicule to the company you were lately in, because of his then growing infirmity.
1725. Watts, Logic, IV. ii. Rule 3. It is mere Foolery to multiply distinct Particulars in treating of Things, where the Difference of your Particulars lies only in Names and Words.
1813. Sporting Mag., XLI. Feb., 227/2. The fame of Jonathan Aldham reached Mistley Hall, and Mr. Rigby, entertained by the oddities and simple foolery of this man, got into the habit of frequently sending for him, as an entertaining butt to a certain description of his visitors.
1858. Doran, Crt. Fools, 38. When the ambassadors of Theodosius the Younger were entertained at a banquet by the Hun, the pomp, gravity, and tremendous drinking were accompanied by an immoderate amount of foolery.
2. A piece of fooling; a foolish or ridiculous action, performance, or thing.
1552. Latimer, Serm. Eph., vi. in Fruitf. Serm. (1584), 198. The devill should have no biding place in England if ringing of bels would serve but is not that will serve against the devill yet we have beleeved such fooleries in times past, but it was but mocking, it was the reaching of the devill.
1589. Warner, Alb. Eng., VI. xxxi. (1612), 156.
| With rufull lookes, sighes, sweete Pigs-nye, and Fooleries more than few | |
| I courted her, so much more stout by how much more I sew. |
1657. North’s Plutarch, Add. Lives (1676), 80. When they have turmoil’d themselves about such fooleries [Horoscopes] a long time, they gain nothing thereby.
1662. Evelyn, Diary, 1 Jan. I went to London, invited to the solemn foolerie of the Prince de la Grange at Lincoln’s Inn, where came the King, Duke, &c.
1772. Town & Country Mag., IV. March, 125. The pleasing levities, and agreeable fooleries of a girl, are particularly disgusting in a wife, and very often receive a construction not at all redounding to her understanding or her modesty.
1830. Athenæum, 16 Oct., 65/1. Art is not a mere luxury: a fine picture is not a piece of bijouterie, to be stowed away in my lady’s boudoir, with Sèvres china, buhl cabinets, Indian fans, and other fooleries.
1859. Tennyson, Vivien, 263.
| Are these your pretty tricks and fooleries, | |
| O Vivien, the preamble? yet my thanks, | |
| For these have broken up my melancholy. |
3. Fools as a class. nonce-use.
1843. Sydney Smith, Lett., 19 Aug., in Mem. (1855), II. 494. He [Robert Peel] knows how to disguise liberal ideas, and to make them less terrible to the Foolery of a country.
