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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

daft.

Foolish, silly, stupid.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/dɑːft/Received-Pronunciation/dæft/General-American, Northern-England
  1. Foolish, silly, stupid.

    Australia · Ireland · New-Zealand · UK · informal
    a daft idea
  2. Crazy, insane, mad.

    Australia · Ireland · New-Zealand · UK · informal
  3. Gentle, meek, mild.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English dafte, defte (“gentle; having good manners; humble, modest; awkward; dull; boorish”), from Old English dæfte (“accommodating; gentle, meek, mild”), from Proto-West Germanic *daftī (“fitting, suitable”). Related to Old English dafnian, dafenian (“to be fitting, appropriate, or becoming”), Russian до́брый (dóbryj, “good”). Doublet of deft. Compare silly which originally meant “blessed; good, innocent; pitiful; weak”, but now means “laughable or amusing through foolishness or a foolish appearance; mentally simple, foolish”. Unrelated to, though perhaps influenced by, daff (“fool (n.); to be foolish (v.)”) (past form daffed).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.