fou

Borrowed from Scots fou. Compare full, a doublet.

fou (comparative more fou, superlative most fou)

1. (Scotland) Drunk.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:drunk

   • 2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 110:

     Shand's father had missed the whole thing — getting fou in the pub, more than likely—but his mum had been there, in her best green twinset, her court shoes polished to a shine as high as Shand's.

• UFO, ufo

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencia) [ˈfow]

Inherited from Latin fōcem, early monophthongized variant of faucem.

fou m (plural fous)

1. (archaic) a narrow cove
2. a narrow passage, a ravine

   Synonym: barranc

fou

1. third-person singular preterite indicative of ser
2. third-person singular preterite indicative of ésser

• “fou”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “fou”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025.
• “fou” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “fou” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

• IPA^(key): /fu/

  • Audio:

    (file)

• Rhymes: -u
• Homophones: fous, fout

Inherited from Middle French fol, from Old French fol, from Latin follem. Cognate with English fool.

fou (masculine singular before vowel fol, feminine folle, masculine plural (obsolete) foux or fous, feminine plural folles)

1. mad, crazy

   Synonyms: folle, dingue, loufoque, cinglé, farfelu, détraqué, maboul, louf, ouf, cinglé, cintré, taré, dingo

• Louisiana Creole: fou

fou m (plural fous or (obsolete) foux, feminine folle)

1. madman
2. jester (court entertainer)
3. (colloquial) nut (extreme enthusiast)

   Synonym: malade

   C'est un fou de voile. ― He's a sailing nut.

• folie
• folle

• Mauritian Creole: fol

Derived from Spanish alfil, from Arabic اَلْفِيل (al-fīl, “elephant; bishop (chess piece)”), influenced by Etymology 1.

fou m (plural fous)

1. (chess) bishop
   • 2023 April, “Les règles du jeu d’échecs 2023”, in FIDE‎^[1], page 3:

     Deux fous blancs habituellement représentés par le symbole (F) […] Un fou peut se déplacer sur n’importe quelle case le long d’une des diagonales sur lesquelles il se trouve.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. booby (bird)

Chess pieces in French · pièces d'échecs (layout · text)
roi	dame	tour	fou	cavalier	pion

• “fou”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• ouf

• IPA^(key): /fu/
• Rhymes: -u

Inherited from French fou (“mad, crazy”).

fou m (feminine fòl)

1. crazy, mad

Inherited from French four (“oven, stove”).

fou

1. (an) oven

fou

1. second-person singular imperative of fouen

fou

1. nonstandard spelling of fóu
2. nonstandard spelling of fǒu
3. nonstandard spelling of fòu

• Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.

Derived from French fou.

• IPA^(key): /fu/

fou (feminine fol)

1. (masculine) madman (a mad, crazy male person)

fou (feminine fol)

1. (masculine) mad, crazy, insane

   Synonym: pagla

• fawe, fay, fogh, fow, fowe, vouh
• fah, fau, foaȝe, foȝ, foh, vaȝe (Early Middle English)

Inherited from Old English fāh, from Proto-West Germanic *faih, from Proto-Germanic *faihaz.

Forms without final /x/ are a result of levelling from Old English inflected forms (e.g., masculine weak nominative singular fāga).

• IPA^(key): /fɔu̯/, /fɔu̯x/
• Rhymes: -ɔu̯

fou

1. multicoloured / multicolored, stippled

• Scots: faw

• “fou, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 27 May 2018.

fou (plural fous)

1. A kind of multicoloured fur.

• “fou, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 27 May 2018.

• four (Guernsey)

Inherited from Old French forn, from Latin furnus.

fou m (plural fous)

1. (Jersey) oven

• fau

Inherited from Latin fagus.

fou oblique singular, m (oblique plural fous, nominative singular fous, nominative plural fou)

1. beech (tree)

• ⇒ French: fouet

fou

1. alternative spelling of fóu

fou

1. obsolete form of fă

• fou in Academia Română, Micul dicționar academic, ediția a II-a, Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2010. →ISBN

Derived from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *(ma-)baqəʀu, from Proto-Austronesian *(ma-)baqəʀuh.

fou

1. new (recently made or created)

Inherited from Middle English ful, from Old English full, from Proto-West Germanic *full, from Proto-Germanic *fullaz, from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁nós.

fou (comparative mair fou, superlative maist fou)

1. full
2. well-fed, full of food or drink, sated, replete
3. drunk, intoxicated
   • 1789, Robert Burns, Willie Brew'd A Peck O' Maut:

     We are na fou, we're nae that fou, / But just a drappie in our ee;

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

fou (comparative mair fou, superlative maist fou)

1. fully, very, quite, rather, too

fou

1. saxifrage

fou (plural fous)

1. bushel

fou

1. animal meat

Possibly cognate to Ternate horu (“to paddle”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɸo.u/

fou

1. (intransitive) to paddle

• IPA^(key): /ˈɸo.u/

fou

1. betel leaf

• James Collins (1982) Further Notes Towards a West Makian Vocabulary‎^[2], Pacific linguistics