Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Why do we say "A fool and his money are soon parted"?

Well-Known Expressions

A fool and his money are soon parted

Meaning:

A foolish person will not hold on to his money for long - whether he is duped out of it or simply spends it all.

Background:

The earliest recorded reference is in Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1573) by Thomas Tusser who writes:

A foole & his money, 
be soone at debate: 
which after with sorow, 
repents him to late.


The version of the expression we use today is first found in Dr. John Bridges' Defence of the Government of the Church of England, 1587:

If they pay a penie or two pence more for the reddinesse of them..let them looke to that, a foole and his money is soone parted.

More expressions and their source

Challenge yourself with BookBrowse Wordplays

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.