tomfoolery

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

From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2026

But baseball—with its slower pace, older audience and a vibe that could be described as somnolent—has rarely participated in such tomfoolery.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026

He chalked up the incident as “a case where the skylarking and tomfoolery in an employment context has gone awry.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 10, 2023

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

He calls it a collection of crazy tricks or tomfooleries, galskaber, an expression which carries with it, in this sense, a confession of wilful paradox.

From Henrik Ibsen by Gosse, Edmund

The old greffier, then, came to Paris for the purpose of witnessing one of the sad tomfooleries of that unhappy profligate, who in better times had been his son.

From The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, November 1, 1851 by Various

This is another of your tomfooleries, I'm sure!

From Bouvard and Pécuchet A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life by Flaubert, Gustave