Online Encyclopedia

Make a correction

Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.

Back to article: FOOLSCAP

Your email: Article name: Article content:

FOOLSCAP, the cap, usually of conical shape, with a cockscomb running up the centre of the back, and with bells attached, worn by jesters and fools (see Fooa); also a conical cap worn by dunces. The name is given to a size of writing or printing paper, varying in size from 12 X 15 in. to 17 X 131 in. (see PAPER). The name is derived from the use of a " fool's cap " as a watermark. A German example of the watermark dating from 1479 was exhibited in the Caxton Exhibition (1877). The New English Dictionary finds no trustworthy evidence for the introduction of the watermark by a German, Sir John Spielmann, at his paper-mill at Dartford in 158o, and states that there is no truth in the familiar story that the Rump Parliament substituted a fool's cap for the royal arms as a watermark on the paper used for the journals of parliament.
FOOL'S PARSLEY, in botany, the popular name for Aethusa Cynapium, a member of the family Umbelliferae, and a common weed in cultivated ground. It is an annual herb, with a fusiform root and a smooth hollow branched stem i to 2 ft. high, with much divided (ternately pinnate) smooth leaves and small compound umbels of small irregular white flowers. The plant has a nauseous smell, and,like other members of the order (e.g. hemlock, water-dropwort), is poisonous.