Search the Dictionary

hich silk is prepared for the weaver. Tomlinson. To throw away. (a) To lose by neglect or folly; to spend in vain; to bestow without a compensation; as, to throw away time; to throw away money. (b) To reject; as, to throw away a good book, or a good offer. -- To throw back. (a) To retort; to cast back, as a reply. (b)…

Folly; trifling.

A wild fancy; an odd conceit; idle sport; folly; trifling opinion. To fly about playing their wanton toys. Spenser. What if a toy take'em in the heels now, and they all run away. Beau. &Fl. Nor light and idle toys my lines may vainly swell. Drayton.

To restore from folly, or from being a fool. [Obs.] Shak.

Not implicated. "Unimplicate in folly." R. Browning.

Want of wisdom; unwise conduct or action; folly; simplicity; ignorance. Sumptuary laws are among the exploded fallacies which we have outgrown, and we smile at the unwisdom which could except to regulate private habits and manners by statute. J. A. Froude.

of chastity; lewd; lustful; lascivious; libidinous; lecherous. Not with wanton looking of folly. Chaucer. [Thou art] froward by nature, enemy to peace, Lascivious, wanton. Shak.

from the true direction; to cause to bend or incline; to pervert. This first avowed, nor folly warped my mind. Dryden. I have no private considerations to warp me in this controversy. Addison. We are divested of all those passions which cloud the intellects, and warp the understandings, of men. Southey.…

erstanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it; but the instruction of fools is folly. Prov. xvi. 22.

Used adjectively, meaning how remarkable, or how great; as, what folly! what eloquence! what courage! What a piece of work is man! Shak. O what a riddle of absurdity! Young.

cious notion, a fanciful or odd conceit. "The whimsies of poets and painters." Ray. Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy. Swift. Mistaking the whimseys of a feverish brain for the calm revelation of truth. Bancroft.

the prophet up at Chebar flood. Milton. The passionate heart of the poet is whirl'd into folly. Tennyson.

home. Shak. Those who pass their youth in vice are justly condemned to spend their age in folly. Rambler.