fool-born
Definitions
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- adjective Begotten by or born of a fool.
Examples
-
My lesson for the day: read posts carefully before replying with a fool-born jest.
-
I was on the point of saying, "Reply not to me with a fool-born jest."
-
But on taking in his hand that one of these two new dramatic pamphlets which might first attract him either by its double novelty as a never acted play or by a title of yet more poetic and romantic associations than its fellow's, such a purchaser as I have supposed, with his mind full of the sweet rich fresh humour which he would feel a right to expect from Shakespeare, could hardly have undergone less than a qualm or a pang of strong disrelish and distaste on finding one of the two leading comic figures of the play break in upon it at his entrance not even with "a fool-born jest," but with full-mouthed and foul-mouthed effusion of such rank and rancorous personalities as might properly pollute the lips even of some emulous descendant or antiquarian reincarnation of Thersites, on application or even apprehension of a whip cracked in passing over the assembled heads of a pseudocritical and mock-historic society.
-
Well, it all comes to the same thing, for there isn't much difference between fool-born and fool-manufactured.
Note
The word 'fool-born' is a Shakespearean term, appearing in Henry IV, Pt 2.
