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Daft   Listen
adjective
Daft  adj.  
1.
Stupid; foolish; idiotic; also, delirious; insane; as, he has gone daft. "Let us think no more of this daft business"
2.
Gay; playful; frolicsome. (Scot.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Daft" Quotes from Famous Books



... daft about voting myself," Mostyn laughed, "and to save my life I can't be enthusiastic about ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... the num'rous human dools, Ill har'sts, daft bargains, cutty-stools, Or worthy friends rak'd i' the mools, Sad sight to see! The tricks o' knaves, or fash o' ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... the Angouleme aristocracy in 1821. He frequented the Bargeton receptions. An artist like his friend Bartas, he also was daft over drawing and would ruin every album in the department with his grotesque productions. He posed as Mme. de Bartas' lover, since Bartas paid court to Mme. de ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... quick or I'd tell all I knowed about the murder of his father. Well, you's orter seen him set up! I thought he was going to die on the spot. He upset his glass. Say, is there anything that smells nicer than a mint julep? There's the most appealin' odor to it. If I was a drinkin' man I'd surely go daft over—but, excuse me. I notice you are yawning, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... "tha wants tha young yed knocked off, Tummas Hibblethwaite. He's fair daft about th' young gentleman as—as was killed. He axes questions mony a day till I'd give him th' stick if he wasna a cripple. He moithers me ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... not the one to do it," she answered grimly. "And what's Penelope doing?" she continued, turning to Nan. "She's more sense than the rest of ye put together, for all she's so daft ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... first in the eyes of honest men of his own generation; but in this Twentieth Century, instead of putting incompetents to the test of the sword, society, committed to the soft doctrine that all life is sacred, burdens itself with lengthening the days of the daft. A far cry that from the ideals of the early Bismarcks! It is well to keep these facts in mind, in contemplating the extraordinary career of the great Otto von Bismarck, king-maker ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... upon his purple vestments. His face had not changed, and, as he never knew he was dying, it showed no pain or fear. It was Amory's dear old friend, his and the others'—for the church was full of people with daft, staring faces, the most ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... his daughter's arm hung on his own, stalk'd by; The blushing "Alice" veils her face from "Julian Peveril's" eye: "Alack-a-day," 'Daft Davie' cries—"come, follow, follow me, We'll strew his grave with cowslip buds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... "It's surely daft the man is!" remarked Myra to the ceiling, before looking again into the bright eyes of her partner. "Pardon me, Don Carlos, but you are carrying your extravagant nonsense too ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... does," Holati said. "But when he starts in on those subjects, I find him difficult to follow." He looked soberly at Trigger. "There are times," he confessed, "when I suspect Professor Mantelish is somewhat daft. But probably he's just so brilliant that he keeps ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... in merry disdain. "Dicky Darrah never dares oppose Evvy—let alone his wife. Kate Darrah says it just serves Hal Willett right. It's no fault of hers that he's daft about Evvy, who's simply bent on giving him a lesson he richly deserves. When the Archers come she'll drop ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... captain—"Many of these fellows get half daft, living so much alone in desolate places like Mull, and seeing nothing all their time but cloud and mountain and sea. He seems to know something about ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... little ken about it; For Britain's gude!—guid faith! I doubt it! Say rather, gaun as Premiers lead him, [going] And saying ay or no's they bid him! At operas and plays parading, Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading. Or maybe, in a frolic daft, To Hague or Calais taks a waft, To make a tour, an' tak a whirl, To learn bon ton an' see the worl'. There, at Vienna, or Versailles, He rives his father's auld entails; [splits] Or by Madrid he takes the rout, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... letter to the Courier-Journal, I reduced what I had heard to writing. Reading this over it seemed so sensational that I added a closing paragraph, meant to qualify what I had written and to imply that I had not gone quite daft. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... she said that I fairly stared at her, for I had thought that she could never have quite forgiven me for the way I used to carry on. That anyone out of a daft house could have liked it, was clean beyond my understanding. I thought of how when she was reading by the door I would go up on the moor with a hazel switch and fix little clay balls at the end of it, and sling them at ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was yet so near to the place where it would have been forever too late. If Ready saw that with his wary eye, turned now and then, as he trotted before,—if he had any terror in his dumb soul, (or whatever you choose to call it,) or any mad joy, or desire to go clean daft with rollicking in the snow at what he had done, he put it off to another season, and kept a stern face on his captive. But Yarrow watched it; it was the first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... she answered quickly: "Human rights—my rights to the bit of hammering that belongs to me. Auntie, you know, advocates cotton-wool so strongly that I suppose I'm a bit daft on my end ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... these, the road, for a considerable distance, descends into this fortunate valley. The song of the waters and the familiar disarray of boulders gave us a strong sense of home, which the exotic foliage, the daft-like growth of the pandanus, the buttressed trunk of the banyan, the black pigs galloping in the bush, and the architecture of the native houses dissipated ere ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... when we had lighted our pipes, "I'll tell you why I'm going to the dogs. I've got to tell it to some one or go daft; and I can't say that I'm not daft as ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... any notion that he will be the more or the less likely to do so when he learns that there's a French gentleman of your make in the country-side, and a friend of Doom's, too, which means a Jacobite? A daft errand, if I may say it; seeking a needle in a haystack was bairn's play ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... mad as a hare, poor fellow, And should be in chains," you say. I haven't a doubt of your statement, But who isn't mad, I pray? Why, the world is a great asylum, And people are all insane, Gone daft with pleasure or folly, Or crazed with ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... I don't know as some folks aren't as daft as Mother Langdale herself!" Peter muttered ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... yer hoos, Robert Rawling! Ye're daft! Gin you met this ganglin' assassinator, wha'd be for maister? San's no to lack a father. Gae to yer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Is the lad gane daft? God has gien to some men wisdom and understanding, to ithers the art o' playing on the fiddle and painting pictures. There shall be no painting, fiddling Crawford among ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... thought the man daft. What on earth (I asked myself) was this nonsense about Sabugal and a barber's shop? I had not been near Sabugal; as for the barber's shop it sounded to me like a piece out of the childish rigmarole about cutting a cabbage leaf to make ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... his heid, The win' blew laich and eerie. In's pooch he had a plack or twa— I vow he hadna mony, Yet Andrew like a linty sang, For Lizzie was sae bonny! O Lizzie, Lizzie, bonny lassie! Bonny, saucy hizzy! What richt had ye to luik at me And drive me daft and dizzy? ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... than it naturally is. Doubtless the contesting of wills is a nuisance, generally speaking, the contestant conspicuously devoid of moral worth and the verdict singularly unrighteous; but as long as some testators really are daft, or subject to interested suasion, or wantonly sinful, they should be denied the power to stifle dissent by fining the luckless dissenter. The dead have too much to say in this world at the best, and it is monstrous and intolerable tyranny for them to stand at the door of the Temple of ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... like either in Heaven Or upon earth for knavery or craft:— Out of the field my cattle yester-even, 445 By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed, He right down to the river-ford had driven; And mere astonishment would make you daft To see the double kind of footsteps strange He has impressed wherever ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the whirl by night and day, I suppose, is my bane; still more, the endless meeting of fresh and fresh small talk, with the fatigue of listening, and the impression on my brain of miscellaneous memories when I ought to sleep. In Oxford, from like causes, I became as it were 'daft,' and from forgetfulness of the right words could not complete an English sentence. A like affection came on me in London last summer, and I had to break away suddenly, to the disappointment of friends, because my ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... "He 'm daft," she said, "an' I'd think harder of him than I do, but that he's led by the nose. 'Twas that auld weasel, Billy Blee, gived him the wink to set you on a task he knawed you'd ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... along the floor; and after a resentful whisky at the Royal, where they laughed at his scrooging bushy eyebrows, fierce black eyes and his deadly-in-earnest denunciation of all humbugs and imposters, he returned to the aforesaid van, let down the flaps, buttoned the daft and "feekle" world out, and himself in, and then retired some more and slept, as I have said, rolled in his blankets and overcoats on a bed ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... and sweet as honey, And Dick owed Pete a pot of money, She knew too well how it must end ... And she would rather lie stone dead Beneath the wayside grass than wed With leering Pete, and live the life, And die the death, of his first wife ... And so, last night, clean-daft with dread, She'd bundled up ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... leg calf, better to suggest * For passion madded amourist better things above! Towards its lover cloth the bowl go round and run; * Cup[FN526] and cup bearer only drive us daft with love."[FN527] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... has possessed the man! Oh, you do distress me so. How could you do such a thing, Limuel? I do believe you have gone daft. But you go right out there now and dig up them good-for-nothin' chickens and bring me that curtain. Go right ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... heard the news, Rob? Nora's going away to be a fine lady. The Camerons have been daft about her all summer, and now they are going ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... time I saw her I went clean, stark, raving, blind, drunken daft over her. I tried to argue and reason myself out of it, but it was no go. I didn't even know ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... tresor, I wish that I could take you flying with me this evening. You'd be daft about it! Lots of it's a rotten bore, of course, but there's something in me that doesn't live at all when I'm on this too, too solid earth. Something that lies there, crouched and dormant, waiting until I've climbed up into ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... For whoso has touched flagons with monarchs, bear they their back bones never so stiffly on the throne, well know the rascals, to be at bottom royal good fellows; capable of a vinous frankness exceeding that of base-born men. Was not Alexander a boon companion? And daft Cambyses? and what of old Rowley, as good a judge of wine and other matters, as ever sipped claret ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... capable of taking it, both the ladies must have thought, with his quick orders about the luggage and his waiting cab. Mrs Kilbannon said so. "I'm sure," she told him, "we are better off with you than with Hugh. He was always a daft dependence ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... beyond disputing. Some said "it was the right thing," and more said "it was the foolish thing," and among the latter was Andrew's mother; though as yet she had said it very cautiously to Andrew, whom she regarded as "clean daft and senselessly ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... hand, and they strained their ears. "I've done that by the hour since you left and the daft gold-diggers went up trail after you. The other fellas feel it, too. Don't know what we'd have done without Kaviak. Think we ought to keep that ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... a lilac dove This Corsair desperate and daft? Behold the conning tower above The big stern chasers pointing aft! This is not he that saved mankind With pards and pigs from tempests blind, But rather he that forged a flood, And not of water but of blood, And filled with worse than wolves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... ain guid man, ye daft fule!" exclaimed Rose Cameron, in a rage. "Wha else suld I bide wi'? And noo, ye'll speer nae mair questions anent my ain preevit life, for I'll nae answer any sic. A woman maunna gie testimony in open coort against her ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... to mortal sight. Even Sir Walter Scott is turned renegade, and, with his stories made up of half-and-half, like Nathaniel Gow's toddy, is trying to throw cold water on the most certain, though most impalpable, phenomena of human nature. The bodies are daft. Heaven mend their wits! Before they had ventured to assert such things, I wish they had been where I have often been; or, in particular, where the Laird of Birkendelly was on St. Lawrence's Eve, in the year 1777, and sundry times subsequent ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... "You're both clean daft together," said the old lady, with dancing eyes. "Well, I'll stop in one of your crying bedrooms—on conditions. We'll talk about that later on. Where's the rest of the island, and how do you ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... as he could borrow. He studied with zeal and became absorbed in his books. Perched upon a woodpile, or lying under a tree with his feet thrust upwards against the trunk and "grinding around with the shade," he caused some neighbors to laugh uproariously, and others to say that he was daft. In fact, he was in grim earnest, and held on ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... the sparrows which always make their home in these depths, and one hears their fussy chirping and the beating of their tiny, fluttering wings against the stalks, and catches the low buzzing of a bumble bee somewhere, and the sound of the gardener's footsteps (it is half-daft Akim) on the path as he hums his eternal sing-song to himself. Then one mutters under one's breath, "No! Neither he nor any one else shall find me here!" yet still one goes on stripping juicy berries from their conical white pilasters, and ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... Carrick. "If I were only twenty years younger, and she'd not turn up her nose at me for a big daft of an Irishman, you'd not get her, me lad. She's the sweetest little thing I have come across this ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... I must hear it again. You must not think I am growing daft, but that song has haunted me all day in the strangest way. There is something in the way you sing it—the words and your voice together—that recall some association too faint for me to grasp. I can neither ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... rest—men an' women an' children. He niwer worked an' waited as I did—he niwer thowt an' prayed as I did; everything come easy wi' him—everything allus did come easy wi' him, an' when I seed him so light-hearted an' careless about what I wur cravin' it run me daft an' blind. Seemt like he couldna cling to it like I did an' I begun to fight agen it, an' when I heerd about that lass o' Barnegats I towd yo', an' when I seen yo' believed what I didna believe mysen, it run me dafter yet, an' I put more to what ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... close. They were tempting the poor daft old man to steal the money from Mrs. Jarley's strong box, and ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... don't ship with a skipper that drinks— You'd better by half play at fan-tan with Chinks!— For that'll mean nothing but muddle an' mess, It may be much more and it can't be much less, What with wrangling and jangling to drive a man daft, And rank bad dis-cip-line both forrard and aft, A ship that's ill-found and a crew out of 'and, And a touch-and-go chance she may never reach land, But go down in a squall or broach to in a sea, For them drunken ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... to business, as they say; he began with more of conscious ethical purpose than he went on, and his banter is poor. But when once we enter the village of Tully-Veolan, the Magician finds his wand. Each picture of place or person tells,—the old butler, the daft Davie Gellatley, the solemn and chivalrous Baron, the pretty natural girl, the various lairds, the factor Macwheeble,—all at once become living people, and friends whom we can never lose. The creative fire of Shakspeare lives again. The Highlanders—Evan ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... any one ever hear the like? It would be a wild-goose chase, even if a man hoped to come to speak with a King in his palace at the end of it; but for thee to go such a journey in order to speak but for a few moments with a man thou dost not know, and in prison, it is nothing but a daft notion! ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... a lot o' blethers," said Jake Tosh contemptuously. "When ye're deid ye're deid, and that's a' aboot it. Na, na, Dauvit, them that sees ghosts is either drunk or daft." ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... was no Christmas tree, no waits, no decorating of the church for the morrow. Still, it was the end of the year—the period, by universal consent, dedicated to goodwill and rejoicing all over the world—the old "daft days" even of sober, austere Scotland. Jenny and Menie, in the kitchen, were looking forward to that Handsel Monday which is the Whit Monday of country servants, and the family gathering of the peasantry in Scotland. First ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... trouble, some feythers and moothers sent and took their young chaps awa'. If them as is left, should know waat's coom tiv'un, there'll be sike a revolution and rebel!—Ding! But I think they'll a' gang daft, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... know; but, to my thinking, he's that daft that he's noways responsible for aught ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... It's daft when chaps that sit i' Parliament Weant tak advice frae lads that talk farm-twang; If t' coontry goes to t' dogs, it's 'cause they've sent Ower mony city ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... 'Daft or na daft, I tell ye this, mother, that I be forty-six year o' age this back-end, and there be some things I will na listen to. Rosa Blencarn's bonny enough ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... to me about wiring or telegraphing or mailing. I have been doing that for nearly a week, until I am nearly gone daft. Of course I could get the regular fake, or barn-stormers or turkey companies—you know 'em—but none of 'em for me. I want companies ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... sun! O my Father, don't kill me! I have but one child, Oh, have pity upon him! My poor boy is daft, Without wits the Lord made him, And sent him so into The world. He is crazy. Why, straight from the bath 390 He at once begins scratching; His drink he will try To pour into his laputs Instead of the jug. And of work he knows nothing; He laughs, and that's ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... Joe, putting away his glasses and starting to fill his pipe, "is a man who knows all about animals and butterflies and plants and rocks an' all. John Dolittle is a very great nacheralist. I'm surprised you never heard of him—and you daft over animals. He knows a whole lot about shellfish—that I know from my own knowledge. He's a quiet man and don't talk much; but there's folks who do say he's the ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... that's hamelike," she said, going closer, "it will be brave weather on Solwayside the noo. I mind when it would hae driven me out to play amang the wreaths like a daft year-auld collie—. Aye, and I am no sure that I wad not like a turn the noo—not o' that saft stuff that will melt and be gane the morn's mornin', but the fine kind that sifts up your sleeve and down your neck!—But for the puir herds on the hill, wae's me, it will be a ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... "are you plumb daft to stickle for little niceties now? I tell you I just helped to pick up Judge Amidon and his son, murdered in their own hayfield not three miles from here, the boy as full of arrows as a cushion of pins. This isn't ancient ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... was to be a writer; there could be no doubt about that. Everybody had noticed it. The Vicar had said, "Johnny will never do any good at Polwollop, I fear"; and the farmer for whom John scared rooks had said, "Thiccy la-ad seems daft-like," and one after another of Mrs. Penquarto's friends had given similar testimony. And now here he was, at twenty-six, in the little bed-sitting-room in Bloomsbury, ready to write the great ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... shouted Mr Macdougall, when he had recovered from the surprise which the unexpected order of the boatswain, so rapidly carried out, had caused. "Are ye gone clean daft?" ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... at it wi' their proverbs till I got akinda nervish, d'ye ken. They were that terriple wyze, that, as fac's ocht, mind you, they near drave some o' the rest o's daft. ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... rubbish and cussing. The pore fule's daft wid the hate and the dust and the welt I give him. Shure it's the way I have to be ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... would care for't. Ye see, man, it's defiance. There's a sair spang o' the auld sin o' the warld in you sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't; an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreights—the wind an' her are a kind of sib, I'm thinkin'—an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants, blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid thraws warstlin' the leelang nicht wi' their bit ships—weel, it comes ower me like a glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor lads; I'm wi' the sea, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... dear! my dear! ye'll think me daft to talk thus; but we men of Stair go gyte in these affairs. 'Tis love at first sight with us, or none at all; but if ye'll have me, I'll make ye Lady Stair; and what's far more, I'll try to make you a happy woman the ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... had been the ribbon and star of a royal order. And then they were all going off the next morning—Miss North included—to a strange little place on the other side of the Isle of Wight; and he had gone "clean daft" with the delight of expectation. There was nothing sacred from his mischievous fancy. He would have made fun of a bishop. In fact he did; for, happening to talk of inarticulate language, he described having seen "the other ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... it's very nat'ral, for ye've had mair nor maist; but gin ye hadna had ane for a maitter o' seventy year or mair, like us, wad ye no' hae been clean daft aboot it?" and the ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... will Karen tell her husband about you—what'll he think of you—what'll your friends think of you—if they all find out that in addition to behaving like a wild-cat to that poor child because you were fairly daft with jealousy, and driving her away—oh, yes you did, Mercedes, it don't do any good to deny it now—if in addition to all that they find out that you've been trying to save your face by blackening her character? Why, they'll think you're the meanest skunk ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... I shall never forget it. I thought, when the police ran down stairs and left me with him, that I was talking to Mr. Narkom. I think I nearly went daft with terror when I found out that ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... was a bit daft," said Sandy, "when he said tae Janie, 'Mind ye sing the lessons I gie ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks

... said the man in a husky voice, 'she's a bit daft, poor girl,' and as he spoke he trod noisily on the stone floor, evidently trying to drown her voice, and forthwith dragged a table that stood in the window ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... all that can be known about the copy of the ballad which, in 1805, Scott received from Hogg. Up to stanza xxiv. it is as given by the two old reciters. The crazy man may be the daft man who recited to Hogg Burns's Tam o' Shanter, and inspired him with the ambition to be a poet. The deranged woman, like mad Madge Wildfire, was rich in ballad scraps. From stanza xxv. to xxxiv., Hogg confessedly "harmonises" what he got in plain prose intermixed ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... but nae sigh did he gi'e, He mounted his mare an' he rade cannilie; An' often he thocht, as he gaed through the glen, 'She's daft to refuse the ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... lassock: Ah've jist got to mak' ma' way in the warld. Wully is a kind brither, but the hoose is too fu' already. An' the bairns are aye merryin' here an merryin' there, an' yon daft Peter 'll be bringin' yon harum-scarum girl o' yours in ane o' thae days—not but that she's a guid honest lass, but ah dinna see whit he wants wi' an Eerish thing like yon; an' the land jist owerrun wi' guid Scotch lassies ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... ye?' he growled in an undertone. 'Do ye call that steering, ye gomeril? Run her by Daft Sandy's boat? It is no better than a cowherd you are ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... feats this single week Wad mak a daft-like diary, O! I drave my cart out owre a dike, My horses in a miry, O! I wear my stockings white an' blue, My love's sae fierce an' fiery, O! I drill the land that I should pleugh, An' pleugh ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... were layin' for a brood i' the loft above the cowshed, he takes up the true egg while the old fowl were away an' sets a porc'lain egg in place of et. In cou'se, back comes the hen, an' bein' a daft body, as I told 'ee, an' not used to these 'ere refinements o' civilizashun, niver doubts but 'tes the same as she laid. 'Twarn't long afore her'd a-laid sax more, and then her sets to work to hatch ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... commander, of whom I have my ain thoughts. I fear me, indeed, to say what I have found, and what I am suspecting, for ye hae reason to conclude that my head is full o' plots, and that broodin' ower treachery has made me daft." ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... moment he said to himself that he was the happiest of men. In the next he cursed himself as the most wretched. And so alternately smiling and cursing, he wandered about the village during those last days of January like one daft, too much absorbed in the inward struggle to be more than half conscious ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... go in through the keyhole, sir, or down the chimney. You seem to be a little daft, sir, don't you know! But if you must get in, perhaps it would be as well to go over to Mrs. Brown's and brang the key," and she slammed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... competition. "It's cutting off his nose to spite his face! Why is he so anxious to be the only carrier in Barbie that he carries stuff for next to noathing the moment another man tries to work the roads? It's a daft-like thing to do!" ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... Gargantua was no bigot: he did not shut his eyes that he might not see, and he believed what his eyes told him. He saw that Pantagruel worked very hard and spent all his time at it, and yet he got no good by it. And what was worse, he was becoming daft, silly, dreamy, and besotted through it. So Pantagruel was taken away from his former masters and handed over to Ponocrates, a teacher of quite a different sort, who was bidden to take him to Paris to make a new creature of him ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... and Sprague alone developed the electric railway, for there were several others who made important contributions. Stephen D. Field of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, had a patent which the Edison interests found it necessary to acquire; C. J. Van Depoele and Leo Daft made important contributions to the trolley system. In Cleveland in 1884 an electric railway on a small scale was opened to the public. But Sprague's first electric railway, built at Richmond, Virginia, in ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... farmer class, our nomenclature is largely regional, and the directories even of our great manufacturing towns represent to a great extent the medieval population of the rural district around them. [Footnote: See Guppy, Homes of Family Names.] The names Daft and Turney, well known in Nottingham, appear in the county in the Hundred Rolls. Cheetham, the name of a place now absorbed in Manchester, is as a surname ten times more numerous there than in London, and the ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... went up in mad dismay. "You don't mean to tell me you've given up going because that man's ordered off? Child, child, you are simply bent on ruining yourself socially. I don't wonder people say you're daft about him." ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... acres of what we let go to hay last year, and plant it to corn, with half an acre of potatoes. The other five acres we'll let grow to hay. Next year we'll have alfalfa where we have corn this year. J.B. is daft on alfalfa, and I'm beginning to see why. The five acres of hay, with the corn, will be enough for the two cows, and we'll keep the pasture over beyond the orchard for them. Miss Janet says as long as she lives there she wants to see those cows—or ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... you about Cyrus's theory of the cells of the body—that all they needed was the proper kind of stimulation, and they'd be as good as new? Well, he went one better than that sometimes. I never told you what his idea was—it sounded kind of daft-like when you didn't hear him laying it down himself—but I'll ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... hundred dollars; but for the King's sake it should go for two. So the King got the block and traveled home with it. He bade guests again, made a feast, and set the pot on the chopping-block in the middle of the room. The guests thought he was both daft and mad, and they went about making game of him, while he cackled and chattered around the pot, calling out, "Bide a bit! Now it boils, now it boils in ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen

... have been clean daft to have trusted himself to one of those savage beasts of the country," said Mr. Buchanan. "And he was no so young either—about sixty, I should say. It didna look even respectable, I remember, when we met him the other day, careering ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... found her here," said Jeanne. "It was an ill bit of luck that took her away; and that Pierre, he is like to go mad about her, since these three days under one roof. I knew not he was so daft, or I had ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... nocturnal rambles; for sometimes one is awakened at night by a tremendous tumult among the wild duck and moorhens that haunt the pool. They rush up and down, screaming and flapping their wings as if they were "daft." ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... Maple Tree County, Neb. turned up at the station at Frankfort, and casually remarked that he was going on to see the most all-fired old Methuselah of a town in Yurrup, and that he guessed that so much travelling alone was enough to send an intelligent, active citizen into the melancholy ward of a daft house, we took the pretty broad hint and suggested that we should join forces. We found, on comparing notes afterwards, that we had each intended to speak with some diffidence or hesitation so as not to ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... now only left for him to do a decent amount of urging, and then acquiesce with dignified melancholy and go off laughing in his sleeve. What is he thinking of to stand there gazing at her downcast face as if he were daft? ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... head again, and looked at her in silence. Elsie began to think he was a little daft. Presently he replied, "You maun sit on ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... sheathing of various kinds put on in varied modes. The most practicable of these is a system prepared by Daft. Most iron vessels are now constructed by every other plate lapping the edges of the one between. He proposes, instead of having the plates all the same width, to have one wide and one very narrow plate. This would leave a trough between the two wide plates of the depth of the thickness of ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... the dyer, staring at me with his rainbow countenance. 'Mr. Alan, what takes you out, rinning like daft, without your hat?' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... that," she replied; "and fighting between the two parts of one land is just the worst fighting there can be. Pray it may not come, Daisy; but those people are quite daft." ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... never there. There's men as says they've been there, but I could hardly believe them, though there's queer things past belief on the sea. There's a sea called Sargasso, and if I told you half the things about it, you'd think me daft. And there's the ghost of ships at sea, and that's past thinking. And there's the great serpent, that I've seen with my ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... Why, man, I must be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know it. Do you suppose I believed that a man at your time of life, brought up as you have been, had suddenly gone daft on ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... Square is with human geese full, And fiercely fights the daft declamator, Undisturbed the nursemaid can push ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various

... "Bluff is daft on the subject of oysters, all right. He never seems to tire of eating them in season, and yet he says he never picked one up on the spot where it grew. He seems to be coming back, Frank!" exclaimed Jerry, who ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... thing—a whole respectable household gone daft about a couple of strange children;" he let the words drop very slowly. "Specially I was distressed to hear of one who rose betimes to milk a cow, so that the cream would have time to rise on the morning's ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... frae my room in the garret I've heard his futsteps comin' and gangin', comin' and gangin' doon one passage and up anither frae midnight till cockcraw. It was weary wark to lie listenin' tae his clatter and wonderin' whether he was clean daft, or whether maybe he'd lairnt pagan and idolatrous tricks oot in India, and that his conscience noo was like the worm which gnaweth and dieth not. I'd ha' speered frae him whether it wouldna ease him to speak wi' the holy Donald McSnaw, but it might ha' been a mistake, and the ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... craft; The demagogue still schemed and lied; The patriot wept, the traitor laughed; The coward to his covert hied, And statesmen went distract or daft. ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... she said, "thoo'rt as daft as a besom. Thoo hes made a botch on't, thoo blatherskite. Stick that in thy gizzern, and don't thoo go bumman aboot like a bee in ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... turn the brain, turn one's head; drive one nuts [Coll.]. Adj. insane, mad, lunatic, loony [Coll.]; crazy, crazed, aliene^, non compos mentis; not right, cracked, touched; bereft of reason; all possessed, unhinged, unsettled in one's mind; insensate, reasonless, beside oneself, demented, daft; phrenzied^, frenzied, frenetic; possessed, possessed with a devil; deranged, maddened, moonstruck; shatterpated^; mad-brained, scatter brained, shatter brained, crackbrained; touched, tetched [Coll.]; off one's head. [behavior suggesting insanity] maniacal; delirious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... here is spending every dollar in a way to make you two in spite of your daft notion—begging your pardon, sir—about not taking profits. The subscribers are coming along for stock, but fingering it gently, as though they can't well believe there's no catch in it. They say it doesn't look reasonable, and I tell them ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... of Germinie's sisters took her to the Rue Saint-Martin, to the house of a repairer of cashmere shawls, with whom she lodged, and who, being almost daft on the subject of religion, was banner-bearer in a sisterhood of the Virgin. She made her lie beside her on a mattress on the floor, and having her there under her hand all night, she vented upon her all her long-standing, venomous jealousy, her ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... anything else, sir. And yet he's a good seaman too, and however fu' he may be, he keeps some form o' reckoning, and never vera far oot either. He's an ambeequosity to me, sir, for if I took a tithe o' the amount I'd be clean daft." ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... said the colonel. "I thought I was going daft. You're the first person who has heard it besides myself." He looked at Pinto. "A hell of a prospect, isn't it?" he said gloomily. ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... PODKHALYUZIN. Gone daft nothing, ma'am! But if you want to have a heart-to-heart talk, honor bright, ma'am; then here's the sort of thing it is, ma'am: at my house there's a certain Russian merchant I know, who is very much in love with Olimpiada Samsonovna, ma'am. "No matter what I have to give," says he, "so long as ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... "He's very daft," said the grandmother. "And what to do for him I don't know. We've nothing to eat ourselves. I might wet his foot and tie ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Pepin; the others chuckle. "He's daft and crazy," declares Marthereau, who is in the habit of fortifying the expression of his thought by using ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... to walk or ride out alone, I shall 'gang daft!' I know I shall! Was ever such a dull, lonesome, humdrum place as this same Hurricane Hall?" complained Cap, as she sat sewing with Mrs. Condiment in ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... lover pained by love in vain. Woe's me for lovers! Ah how many men * By nights and pine and passion low are lain! As though by stress of love they had been made * Morn-less and sleep-less by their pain and bane. When I went daft for him who conquered me * And pined for him who proved of proudest strain, My tears in streams down trickled and I cried * 'These long-linkt tears bind like an adamant-chain:' Grew concupiscence, severance long, and I * Lost Patience' ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... his sisters pulled his curls and he did not feel it, his father brought a stick down on his back and he only started and stared, and his mother cried because he was losing his mind and would grow daft, and even his mother's tears he scarcely saw. He was always ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... Glasgow; "Ye're just daft on thae points, Duncan M'Nab: why, man alive! yer' nae people at hame, much less here, where you are as the least plash flung from the paddle-wheel below us to the braid stream on which it drops to mingle with its waters; a lesson ye ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... irae. And Meg, on her part, though she often called them "drunken ne'er-do-weels, and thoroughbred High-street blackguards," allowed no other person to speak ill of them in her hearing. "They were daft callants," she said, "and that was all—when the drink was in, the wit was out—ye could not put an auld head upon young shouthers—a young cowt will canter, be it up-hill or down—and what for no?" was her ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... naturalist was in business at Louisville, early in the century; but in 1812, he failed in this venture, and moved to Henderson, where his neighbors thought him a trifle daft,—and certainly he was a ne'er-do-well, wandering around the woods, with hair hanging down on his shoulders, a far-away look in his eyes, and communing with the birds. In 1818, the botanist Rafinesque, on the first of his several tramps ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... can do it; yet I have only one indisputable fact for a starter. That is why I want you to tell me whether I'm growing daft or simply adventurous. Mr. Gryce, I don't trust Brotherson. He has pulled the wool over Dr. Heath's eyes and almost over those of Mr. Challoner. But he can't pull it over mine. Though he should tell a story ten times more plausible than ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... Most of that daft night-running will always be blank in Christopher's mind; moments and moments, like islands of clarity, remain. He brings back one vivid interval when he found himself seated on his father's gravestone ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... scientific observation in all the members of my household, not only in the good-looking maids—though he could, I have no doubt, tell their points as I could those of a horse. We have maidens here of several distinct races, Marshfield. We have also witches, and Jew leeches, and holy daft people. In any case, Yany, with all its dependencies, material, male and female, are at your disposal, for what you can make ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... "Eh, what are the daft laddies saying now?" inquires the old lady, struggling hard to keep out of her voice the pride ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... you must be gone clean daft. How ever could you have hot gravy, Sir? And all the Yordases hales cold meat. Your poor dear grandfather—ah! he ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... the matter?" said Mr. Menteith, sharply. "You're gone daft, man;" for the big Highlander ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... was rash only for himself. "Now who is daft?" he retorted. "The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... till the morning of the second day that Edward learned the whole history of this reconciliation, which had at first been so welcome to him. It was Daft Davie Gellatley, who, by the roguish singing of a ballad, first roused his suspicions that something underlay Balmawhapple's professions of regret ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... "I'm just daft when I get to the cartes," he answered in his brogue, and we fell to piquet. Now my Scot wore a very fine coat, and on the same very large smooth silver buttons, well burnished. Therefore, perceiving such an advantage as a skilled player may ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... everlasting ruin if I do.' 'Face the music like a man,' I said, 'and get out of it what you can.' I could see by his eyes that he was honin' to come back, but he was almighty afraid, I reckon mostly on Amada's account. He's plum' daft about her—and I don't know as I blame him very much—and he told me he had planned to get her ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... there; but those looking on must have seen me get ahead of him within view of the starting-point; soon after that I lost sight of him. The river winds, you know; and of course I thought he was coming on behind me. Very daft of me, not to divine that the boat had ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... the choking blast. I stopped and did my best to turn him back. "Now don't," I said, shouting to make myself heard in the storm, "now don't, Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle now? You must be daft. This wild day has nothing for you. There is no game abroad, nothing but weather. Go back to camp and keep warm, get a good breakfast with your master, and be sensible for once. I can't carry you all day or feed you, and this storm ...
— Stickeen • John Muir

... that dared to pen the trash in that black postscript, I look at it as Cranmer did, and (but that it is yours, Emmy, not mine), could wish it burnt. But no fears now, my girl, huzza, huzza! I believe every one about me thinks me daft; and so I am for very joyfulness; notwithstanding, let me be didactic, or you will say so too. I really will endeavour to rein in, and go along in the regular hackney trot, that you may partly comprehend me. Well, then, here ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... acclaimed from every corner of Great Britain as the national hero. The City of London presented him with a two hundred guinea sword, and a vote of thanks to himself, officers and men. There was much prayer and thanksgiving, and several women went as daft as brushes over him. One said her heart was absolutely bursting with all sorts of sensations. "I am half mad," says she, and any one who reads the letter will conclude that she understated her mental condition. But of all the many ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... rantin' wicked wit; Are thy works, thy fame livin' yet? Will thae daft people never quit An ne'er ha'e done Disturbin' me in my black pit Wi' ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... of a poke Where never had rabbit lain; He could pulp your watch like an egg's red yoke And could give it you whole again; And the king he laughed, "Ha-ha," he laughed, Till they thumped on his back anon; And the other magicians went dancing daft To see the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various

... over stiles, springing delightful little surprises upon them, just where the road looked blocked! The trouble is that I've no gift for organised charity. I have a pretty middling strong will of my own ("pigheadedness" Aunt Emmeline calls it!) and committees drive me daft. They may be useful things in their way, but it's not my way. I want to get to work on my own, and not to sit talk, talk, talking over every miserable, piffling little detail. No! If I play fairy, I must at least be free to wave my own wand, and to find my own niche ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the crush in the dark theyre always trying to wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes tipping me there and looking away hes a bit daft I think I saw him after trying to get near two stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers window at the same little game I recognised him on the moment the face and everything but he didnt remember me yes and she didnt even want me to kiss her at the Broadstone going away well I hope shell ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce



Words linked to "Daft" :   daftness, wacky, kooky, fruity, loopy, around the bend, loco, haywire, batty, nuts, bonkers, round the bend



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