befool
To make a fool out of (someone); to fool, trick, or deceive (someone).
Verb
- To make a fool out of (someone); to fool, trick, or deceive (someone).
- Nothing doth so befoole a man as extreme passion; this doth both make them fooles, which otherwise are not; and show them to be fooles that are so […] - 1605, Joseph Hall, Meditations and Vowes, Diuine and Morall,...
- [T]hey ſettle upon their ovvn dregs, and grovv muddy and muſty vvith long eaſe, and their proſperity befooleth them to their ovvn deſtruction. - 1637 July (date delivered), Robert Sanderson, “[Ad Aulam.] Sermon VI....
- Flattery is their nature—to coax, flatter and sweetly befool some one is every woman’s business. - 1854, Arthur Pendennis [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], chapter XL, in The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most...
Origin
From Middle English bifolen, equivalent to be- + fool.