Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Begotten by or born of a fool.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Begotten by a fool.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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My lesson for the day: read posts carefully before replying with a fool-born jest.
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I was on the point of saying, "Reply not to me with a fool-born jest."
Heartsease, Or, the Brother's Wife Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862
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-- _Answer not to me with a fool-born jest_, as your poor friend
The Journal of Sir Walter Scott From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford Walter Scott 1801
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But on taking in his hand that one of these two new dramatic pamphlets which might first attract him either by its double novelty as a never acted play or by a title of yet more poetic and romantic associations than its fellow's, such a purchaser as I have supposed, with his mind full of the sweet rich fresh humour which he would feel a right to expect from Shakespeare, could hardly have undergone less than a qualm or a pang of strong disrelish and distaste on finding one of the two leading comic figures of the play break in upon it at his entrance not even with "a fool-born jest," but with full-mouthed and foul-mouthed effusion of such rank and rancorous personalities as might properly pollute the lips even of some emulous descendant or antiquarian reincarnation of Thersites, on application or even apprehension of a whip cracked in passing over the assembled heads of a pseudocritical and mock-historic society.
A Study of Shakespeare Algernon Charles Swinburne 1873
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"Well, it all comes to the same thing, for there isn't much difference between fool-born and fool-manufactured.
Stella Fregelius Henry Rider Haggard 1890
qms commented on the word fool-born
Does Junior deserve our full scorn
Or Eric the comics’ bullhorn?
Is it mere misconception
That forms our perception
Of offspring so sadly fool-born?
April 15, 2019