FOLLY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does folly mean? 

• FOLLY (noun)
  The noun FOLLY has 4 senses:

1. the trait of acting stupidly or rashly

2. a stupid mistake

3. the quality of being rash and foolish

4. foolish or senseless behavior

  Familiarity information: FOLLY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FOLLY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The trait of acting stupidly or rashly

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

folly; foolishness; unwiseness

Hypernyms ("folly" is a kind of...):

trait (a distinguishing feature of your personal nature)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "folly"):

indiscretion; injudiciousness (the trait of being injudicious)

absurdity; fatuity; fatuousness; silliness (a ludicrous folly)

asininity (the quality of being asinine; stupidity combined with stubbornness)

Antonym:

wisdom (the trait of utilizing knowledge and experience with common sense and insight)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A stupid mistake

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

betise; folly; foolishness; imbecility; stupidity

Hypernyms ("folly" is a kind of...):

error; fault; mistake (a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The quality of being rash and foolish

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

craziness; folly; foolishness; madness

Context example:

adjusting to an insane society is total foolishness

Hypernyms ("folly" is a kind of...):

stupidity (a poor ability to understand or to profit from experience)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Foolish or senseless behavior

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

craziness; folly; foolery; indulgence; lunacy; tomfoolery

Hypernyms ("folly" is a kind of...):

caper; frolic; gambol; play; romp (gay or light-hearted recreational activity for diversion or amusement)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "folly"):

meshugaas; mishegaas; mishegoss ((Yiddish) craziness; senseless behavior or activity)

buffoonery; clowning; frivolity; harlequinade; japery; prank (acting like a clown or buffoon)

 Context examples 

The folly of the means they often employ is only to be equalled by the folly of what they have in view.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The painful remembrance of the folly it had helped to nourish and perfect was the only emotion which could spring from a consideration of the building.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I am sure it will be all hushed up, and nothing proved but Rushworth's folly.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed, have been folly to repent.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I have done all this only to cure you of your silly pride, and to show you the folly of your ill-treatment of me.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Even these bore trace of the drunken folly of the pirates, one in a broken thwart, and both in their muddy and unbailed condition.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

It would be folly to call him distingué, but he is at least unobjectionable.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends and relations.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)