[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]
Word:
Tomfoolery
Definition: noun
Foolish or silly behavior; the action or behavior of a tom-fool.
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| Waka-waka-waka! |
Origin:
The modern tomfoolery has only been bandied about since 1812, when--according to the OED--writers (and brothers) Horatio and James Smith included the word in their book of humor, Rejected Addresses, specifically the line, "Round let us bound for this is Punch's holiday, Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza! huzza!"
Zing! That 19th century comedy is as fresh as ever!
Tomfoolery is just the offspring of a much older--and very similar--word, tom-fool (or, all dressed up like a proper noun, Tom-Fool), which the OED tells us was born around 1356. Joseph Thomas Fowler, in 1901, edited a manuscript from those quaint days of the 14th century called Extracts from the Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham (your bible if you're an insomniac) which included the following sentence from 500+ years earlier, "Pro funeracione Thome Fole."
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| Note: Google Translate doesn't translate much. |
[Side note: Google Translate detects that jambled sentence as Spanish. Or Latin. Or God knows what.
When translators quit on you, that's when you know you're diving deep.]
So why Tom and why fool?
For centuries Tom was considered a generic male's name, the same we might use the name John today. (Think: John Doe.) Tom Thumb, Tom, Dick, and Harry, tomcat, and Tom and Jerry are all examples of good ol' generic Tom. If you're named Tom, odds are your parents lacked imagination. This is how they met each other. They were dull. It happens.
As for fool, it appears as long as there has been language there have been fools. This results in a gasbag of an etymology, from Middle English to Old French to Italian to Latin, where we end up with follem or follish, which, when popularized in Latin, meant an empty-headed person.
Most Obscure UrbanDictionary.com definitions of tomfoolery:
(verbatim)
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| Trying to figure out what he needs to shine. |
10. Cockney rhyming slang for 'jewelry'. Often shortened to just 'tom'.
11. monkey shines
12. sticking a half-smoked joint into the carb of a pipe and covering the bowl with your thumb.
Used in a sentence:
1. The administrators of the college won't stand for the hijinks and tomfoolery of the frats during pledge week.
Why you should use tomfoolery in your everyday life:
Because noahfoolery or jacobfoolery don't have quite the same ring.
Word Awesomeness Scale (1-to-5):
Two.
Shenanigans is better, but tomfoolery is reliable.
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