tomfoolery
Americannoun
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tomfooleries
plural
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foolish or silly behavior; tomfoolishness.
- Synonyms:
- monkeyshine, horseplay, silliness, foolishness
-
a silly act, matter, or thing.
noun
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foolish behaviour
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utter nonsense; rubbish
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of tomfoolery
Explanation
Tomfoolery is foolishness. Starting a food fight in a cafeteria is an example of tomfoolery. Tomfoolery is a silly-looking word, and it means a silly thing: foolish or ridiculous behavior. Tomfoolery is senseless behavior, like pulling pranks or being obnoxious. If a bunch of students in class keep talking and laughing, the teacher might yell "Stop your tomfoolery!" Tomfoolery can be annoying to others, but it's usually not serious. Committing a crime is a lot worse than tomfoolery. Tomfoolery is more like goofing around or being a clown.
Vocabulary lists containing tomfoolery
Pygmalion
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Fast Pitch
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Slay
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On the surface, this is simply the kind of weird tomfoolery you’d expect from the early 1900s.
From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2026
But baseball—with its slower pace, older audience and a vibe that could be described as somnolent—has rarely participated in such tomfoolery.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026
That doesn’t happen until Act 4, but at the earlier finale, full of tomfoolery, the stage is well set for depth in a way not dissimilar to “Falstaff.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2026
He told the court this was a case of "skylarking and tomfoolery" that had "gone awry".
From BBC ● Nov. 9, 2023
When Jean Louise felt apprehensive, expectant, or on edge, especially when confronting her aunt, her brain clicked to the meter of Gilbertian tomfoolery.
From "Go Set a Watchman: A Novel" by Harper Lee
For 11 seasons, Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules” has followed the triumphs, tragedies and tomfooleries of a group of Hollywood 20-something nobodies who became 30-something wannabes as the show became a reality TV juggernaut.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 31, 2024
Such formal prose does not entirely squelch the sort of tomfooleries that Pynchon devotees so eagerly search out.
From Time Magazine Archive
It is our old friend the Doctor, with his Bolognese jargon, long-winded citations, insipid tomfooleries, and absurd pretensions to omniscience.
From The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi; Volume the First by Carlo Gozzi
He calls it a collection of crazy tricks or tomfooleries, galskaber, an expression which carries with it, in this sense, a confession of wilful paradox.
From Henrik Ibsen by Edmund Gosse
Thus we find ourselves in the presence of conditions not unlike those which produced the tomfooleries of the court of Louis XVI and the musettes, bergerettes and aubades of French song.
From Some Forerunners of Italian Opera by W. J. (William James) Henderson
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
