Talk:fool

RFV discussion: September 2020

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fool

Rfv-sense "Buddy, dude, person." Glades12 (talk) 13:59, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm familiar with a colloquial use of "fool" which could be replaced with "dude", which may be what this was aiming to cover. It's hard to say whether it should be considered separate from a separate sense from the derogatory sense, though I can see the argument for it and we do have separate senses for this kind of thing at e.g. wanker. I'm having a hard time recalling the most typical collocations, but here are a few examples (one is closer to the "person with poor judgement" end of the spectrum than the "dude" end, but still perhaps helpful):

• 2019, Vivian Blue, In Love With A Dangerous Man 3:

  “What you doin' fool?!” Roby shouted, hitting Howie on the arm. “Don't do that,” Howie said, looking at her sternly. “We were up in here chillin' before your friend came. Don't wait until now to clown.”

• 2017, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Blackout:

  “I said get over here, fool! Watch that child!” The man was about to say something when Nikki forcibly yanked him over to the sidewalk. “Yeah, okay,” he muttered.

Sometimes, the l is dropped in pronunciation and writing (a feature of AAVE and some other dialects), as in:

• 2020, J. Lewis Johnson, A Dark Night in the Fieldhouse:

  [page 10:] "I knew you'd be scared," Reggie laughed. "What are you doin', foo? You must be crazy. You don't scare me." "Then why did you almost fall out of that chair? I scare everyone."

  [page 38:] "This is coo," said Fred. "It's almost like being there." "We are there, foo!" said Reggie as the boys slapped palms.

- -sche (discuss) 20:09, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Cited, I think. More cites can be found using "What up fool" as a search term. I couldn't think of any other phrase it would be used in that other senses of fool generally wouldn't, but feel free to take a stab at it to add some variety to the cites. -sche, I'm going to go ahead and add the 2020 quote you found, as it is also quite illustrative. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:17, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 00:40, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

I was fool enough to believe him

Is fool here uncountable? --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:10, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Which of these sounds best? I would pick the first or second over the third.

1. They were fools enough to believe him.
2. They were foolish enough to believe him.
3. They were fool enough to believe him. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:27, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

They all sound fine to me. Also More fool me, to have believed him.. However, I don't think this makes fool uncountable. I think it is the adjective sense. Kiwima (talk) 20:52, 5 December 2020 (UTC)