tomfoolery

On the surface, this is simply the kind of weird tomfoolery you’d expect from the early 1900s.

From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2026

Lacking immediate options, Bea succumbs to Christy’s latest tomfoolery.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 7, 2026

Cue a medley of exquisite tomfoolery, featuring bawdy badinage, dubious love-poems, mistaken identity, visual gags, a chaotic play-within-a-play and lots of linguistic whimsy.

From New York Times ● May 2, 2024

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

Kamerer, I was sure, would not put his patrons through these degrading tomfooleries.

From The Talking Horse And Other Tales by F. Anstey

In January Cicero wrote to his friend Curio, and told him with disgust of the tomfooleries which were being carried on at the election of Quæstors.

From The Life of Cicero Volume II. by Anthony Trollope

"I never talk tomfooleries," said the other, "without first knowing my audience."

From The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton