folly
noun
Simple meaning
Foolishness that results from a lack of foresight or lack of practicality.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
fahleeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfɑli
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Foolishness that results from a lack of foresight or lack of practicality.
Thoughtless action resulting in tragic consequence.
architecture
A fanciful building built for purely ornamental reasons.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Foolishness that results from a lack of foresight or lack of practicality.
Used this way, folly is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use folly
- “Trying to drive through a blizzard is the height of folly.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The transaction in 1867 in which the United States Secretary of State William Henry Seward purchased Alaska from Russia.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.