Fool and Foolish

When we do not use our wisdom in our acts, that is called Foolishness. Therefore,  a person who commits such acts should be called a Foolish, but no, the right term is Fool. In other words, your actions may be Foolish but you are not Still you are called something: You are a Fool.
Originally, the word Fool and Foolish were one and the same because the term Fool did not exist, and there was only Foolish. The constant usage of a word ends up creating several interesting phenomena and one of them is this case. Foolish and Fool are still the same because Fool is the short of Foolish yet somehow, somewhen, Fool became a noun and Foolish remained as an adjective.
If you do something like getting drunk the night before an important exam that is Foolish (also known as an Act of Folly). Your action was Foolish. If you honestly believe that you can learn English in fifty hours, then you are a Fool.
Of course, the problem for us, Spanish speakers, is our ignorance of this situation since for us FOOL is TONTO and FOOLISH is also TONTO. If we are taught one and not the other we end up using Fool as both a noun and an adjective. This is yet one more thing about English our students should be made aware of.


















































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