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

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 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

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

I must keep out of these tomfooleries, though they have their uses.

From Julia Ward Howe 1819-1910 by Maud Howe Elliott

George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, in an address 'To such as follow the world's fashions,' gives an almost incredible description of the tomfooleries of dress which prevailed.

From Works of John Bunyan — Volume 02 by John Bunyan

I’ll have no such profligacy in Romford; poor people shall not be wheedled out of their money by your tomfooleries.

From Curiosities of Impecuniosity by H. G. Somerville