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, ginger, sassafras, etc. Small beer, weak beer; (fig.) insignificant matters. "To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer." Shak.

or. Else some will beg thee, in the court of wards. Harrington. Hence: To beg (one) for a fool, to take him for a fool. I beg to, is an elliptical expression for I beg leave to; as, I beg to inform you. -- To bag the question, to assume that which was to be proved in a discussion, instead of adducing the proof or sust…

thing believed; the object of belief. Superstitious prophecies are not only the belief of fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men. Bacon.

To make sottish; to make dull or stupid; to stupefy; to infatuate. Fools besotted with their crimes. Hudibras.

To talk foolishly, or nonsensically. G. Eliot.

A jeer or flout; a sharp jest or taunt; a trick. He that a fool doth very wisely hit, Doth very foolishly, although he smart, Not to seem senseless of the bob. Shak.

An omen; a prognostic. [Obs.] This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl Makes all these bodements. Shak.

"Death's heads and bogies." J. H. Newman. [Written also bogey.] There are plenty of such foolish attempts at playing bogy in the history of savages. C. Kingsley.

ich resembles an arrow; a dart. Look that the crossbowmen lack not bolts. Sir W. Scott. A fool's bolt is soon shot. Shak.

in a disparaging sense.] Whate'er these book-learned blockheads say, Solon's the veriest fool in all the play. Dryden.

ack, as if frightened. I for sorrow sung, That such a king should play bopeep, And go the fools among. Shak.

To befool; to trick. [Obs.] I am abused, betrayed; I am laughed at, scorned, Baffled and bored, it seems. Beau. & Fl.

To quarrel noisily and outrageously. Let a man that is a man consider that he is a fool that brawleth openly with his wife. Golden Boke.

To pound, beat, rub, or grind small or fine. Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar, . . . yet will not his foolishness depart from him. Prov. xxvii. 22.

nection of the voice with the lungs, which lie within the breast. [Obs.] By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. Shak. Breast drill, a portable drilling machine, provided with a breastplate, for forcing the drill against the work. -- Breast pang. See Angina pectoris, under Angina. -- To make a clean breast, to…

Officious; meddling; foolish active. On meddling monkey, or on busy ape. Shak.

Past; gone by. "Bygone fooleries." Shak

The top, or uppermost part; the chief. Thou art the cap of all the fools alive. Shak.

A simpleton; an idiot. Macaulay. Changelings and fools of heaven, and thence shut out. Wildly we roam in discontent about. Dryden.

In the manner of a child; in a trifling way; in a weak or foolish manner.