Or the “king’s fool,” is described as “a witty and jocose person kept by princes to inform them of their faults, and of those of others, under the disguise of a waggish story.”
Harper’s Book of Facts, 1905.
A foolish man may be known by six things:
Arabian proverb. Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Quotations by Leonard Levinson, 1971.
Sophomore comes from two Greek words: sophos (wise), and moros (foolish). So the sophomore is literally the wise fool - and that’s why the adjective sophomoric has long meant “pretentious, immature and superficial.”
Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William and Mary Morris, 1977.
