Fond

How to spell fond

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fond

What does fond mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a warm affection or liking for someone or something.
2. adjectiveFoolishly or naively held, especially of hopes or beliefs unlikely to be realised.

Fond in a sentence

• She remained fond of her old colleagues long after she left the firm.

• His fond hope of a quick promotion faded after the third year.

• He is especially fond of long walks along the coast on quiet mornings.

• She clung to the fond belief that the debt would simply disappear.

Where does fond come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Fond comes from the Middle English word fonned, the past participle of the verb fonnen, meaning 'to be foolish' or 'to act like a fool', which was built on the noun fon, a word for a fool or simpleton that appeared in English around the 1300s. Its earliest sense was therefore not warm at all: to be fond of someone first meant to be foolishly or doting in your affection toward them. Over the following centuries the disapproving edge wore away, and by the 1500s the word had softened into the familiar modern meaning of having a tender, affectionate liking. A faint trace of the original idea survives in the phrase 'fond hopes', where the hopes are gently foolish or naive. The spelling is mercifully simple, a single short syllable, and it has stayed stable ever since the doubled letters of fonned were trimmed down to the modern form.

How the word is built

• fond (from Middle English fonned: foolish, doting)