Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Foolishness; nonsense.
- n. A trifle; a gewgaw.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Mere nonsense; an idle fancy or conceit; a silly trifle.
- n. plural Trivial ornaments; fallals.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable Nonsense or foolishness.
- n. countable A decorative object of little value; a trifle or gewgaw.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. colloq. Nonsense; foolish talk.
WordNet 3.0
- n. nonsensical talk or writing
Etymologies
- Originally a nonsense refrain in several old songs. (Wiktionary)
- From a nonsense refrain in some old songs. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Nobel lecture that follows, and since the standard biographical folderol is most easily found online at www. scripps.edu/chem/sharpless/, I hope to provide”
“Almost lost in all the folderol is their brilliance.”
“Lost in all the folderol was the fact that their opponent, Stephen F. Austin, actually won the game.”
“I want to hear what kind of folderol they think they've got, so I can clear it up once and for all.”
“OT, I know, but I can’t let this kind of folderol go unanswered....”
“In the end the novels and stories of Henry James stand above all this folderol.”
“There's no evidence that Jesus was aware of all the folderol that the Bible says occurred at his birth, and there's no evidence that anyone made anything of it for a long time after his death.”
“Perhaps when planning the inspired folderol, the imaginative Weinstein figured he was designing a one-time gig, but the result has to be regarded as the debut of an astonishing new show-biz act.”
“It can all come off as so much folderol, but you'll definitely be flipping on and on, surprised at how much you're enjoying Brown's manipulative finesse.”
“They know that what they do will not be immediately dismissed as folderol.”
The Washington Post: The burqa in France: Removing the veil without facing society's shortcomings
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘folderol’.
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Muse's tacet ,to learn
Music brings silence's to raging thoughts and temperament , calm, as it is our object of definite purpose.
tacet, cadence, tempo, treble clef, penultimate, lexicon, origin, orchestra, kantele, magus, eros, coalesce and 248 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2057 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 569 more...
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TheLaughorist's list
Solipsistic Stew
sphalm, solipsism, philopolemic, fulgor, dorbel, elozable, amnion, woiwode, illiquid, pinkwash, clawback, folderol and 9 more...
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Portmanteau-ism
portmanteau, apophenia, apoplexy, antisyzygy, canard, augur, interstice, sang-froid, agent provocateur, aposiopesis, folderol, twaddle and 5 more...
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Nonsense
Words that mean (more or less) 'nonsense'
moonshine, tommyrot, rigmarole, hogwash, piffle, hokum, horsefeathers, codswallop, folderol, blatherskite, humbug, gammon and 1 more...
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Trash Talk
Words that indicate meaningless, confusing or deceptive talk.
white noise, blarney, pidgin, jabber, bullshit, yadda yadda yadda, mishmash, farrago, gobbledygook, yammer, drivel, jargon and 18 more...
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• The bonhomous lynchpin - And other ...
plinth, starboard, bonhomie, bulkhead, brethren, gabardine, anon, lynchpin, vine, yoke, sequin, marigold and 12 more...
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Valuseless
Of low worth or little importance.
Unwanted matter by drusky is a nice, related list.trivial, cheap, inutile, ineffectual, dross, floccinaucinihili..., gimcrack, frippery, invalidated, drivel, otiose, tripe and 91 more...
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work these into conversation
Challenge!
legerdemain, polysemic, rupestrian, callipygian, oscitancy, numen, lucubration, asperity, amalgam, apposite, wastrel, eleemosynary and 208 more...
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ecbrenner's list
flatline, luddism, apocalipstick, muttsucker, leviathan of fore..., flint, coryphaeus, donnybrook, bandwidth, bagpipe the mizen, cheesed off, asterism and 525 more...
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Chennessy's Words
philistine, messianic, dyad, cult, bourgeois, blot, ploy, polyglot, lingua franca, cumbersome, lumber, petit-bourgeois and 446 more...
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Logodaedalus' Lexical Locutionary
Discombobulating the illiterate since the middle of the last century.
adiaphora, agitprop, alliteration, apophthegm, autarky, bête noire, bezoar, biorhythm, braggadocio, canaille, confabulate, confrère and 339 more...
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Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for folderol.
ecbrenner This is one of my favorite replacements for the f-word. Why I have no idea. It's not harsh, nor is its meaning related. Go figure. Jul 23, 2009
jinglebelljosie also, falderal Nov 8, 2008
whichbe From before Shakespeare's "There was a lover and his lass, / With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonny no", right down to the present day, nonsense words have been a regular feature of song lyrics. You might think that it's a stretch to suggest another meaningless la-la lyric filler is the origin of this usefully dismissive word. However, that indeed seems to be its origin, although the usual form until relatively recently was falderal rather than folderol.
There are many traditional rhymes and songs with variants of "fal-de-ral" in them somewhere. For example, Robert Bell noted these words of an old Yorkshire mummer's play in his Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry Of England of 1857: "I hope you'll prove kind with your money and beer, / We shall come no more near you until the next year. /Fal de ral, lal de lal, etc." And Sir Walter Scott included a few lines of an old Scottish ballad in The Bride of Lammermoor (1819): "There was a haggis in Dunbar, / Fal de ral, etc. / Mony better and few waur, / Fal de ral, etc." Charles Dickens had gentle fun with this habit in his Sketches By Boz of 1836-7: "Smuggins, after a considerable quantity of coughing by way of symphony, and a most facetious sniff or two, which afford general delight, sings a comic song, with a fal-de-ral — tol-de-ral chorus at the end of every verse, much longer than the verse itself."
It was around 1820 that this traditional chorus is first recorded as a term for a gewgaw or flimsy thing that was showy but of no value, though it had to wait until the 1870s before it started to be widely used.
(from World Wide Words) May 27, 2008