folly

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Foolishness that results from a lack of foresight or lack of practicality.

   “It would be folly to walk all that way, knowing the shops are probably shut by now.”

   “With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.”

2. (countable, uncountable)Thoughtless action resulting in tragic consequence.

   “The purchase of Alaska from Russia was termed Seward's folly.”

   “Thames Water has become the latest object lesson in the predictable and predicted folly of privatised monopolies, aided by a regulator that’s an even bigger wet wipe than the fatbergs bunging up the sewers.”

3. (countable, uncountable)A fanciful building built for purely ornamental reasons.

   “A luncheonette in the shape of a coffee cup is particularly conspicuous, as is intended of an architectural duck or folly.”

   ““The Villa Straylight,” said a jeweled thing on the pedestal, in a voice like music, “is a body grown in upon itself, a Gothic folly. […]””

   “It has been a long time since new follies were springing up across the great estates of Britain. But the owners of Doddington Hall, in Lincolnshire, have brought the folly into the 21st century, by building a 30ft pyramid in the grounds of the Elizabethan manor.”

   “A great deal of eccentricity was expressed through the trend for ruin follies. But it wasn’t only the madness of paranoid earls and fashionable landowners that was encoded in them.”

4. A clump of trees, particularly one on the crest of a hill (or sometimes on a stretch of open ground).

   “'Every hill seems to have a Folly' [...] 'I mean a clump of trees on the top.'”

   “Folly Beach, the next island to the south (batik 3.7), bears the name given it by mariners, who looked for the island's tree-crested dune ridge, a volley or folly of trees, as a navigation guide [...] Probably a lot of East Coast islands bore the temporary name of Folly Beach.”

   “During the 1920s and 1930s, Folly Farms (above) [referencing a photograph of a farmhouse surrounded by large trees] was owned by Mrs. Samuel Pennington Rotan of Pennsylvania, who was involved in the effort to improve medical care for the indigent people around Ways Station. … Folly Farms was originally known as Myrtle Grove …”

verb

1. (dialectal)To follow.

   “"You got any money?" he said to me. ¶ "Hell no, maybe enough for a pint of whisky till I get to Denver. What about you?" ¶ "I know where I can get some." ¶ "Where?" "Anywhere. You can always folly a man down an alley, can't you?"”

   “"Anybody got the makin's?" he said. "That's one hell of a thick bunch of canvas, but I follied the seam."”

   “Howandever, at the selfsame time, there was a gang of fellas from the valley of kings follying the very same pointy star. And didn't that pointy star point them king-fellas in the direction of Mary's cowstable.”