three-inch fool

Definition

three-inch fool rate

(Adult / Slang)

(1) William Shakespeare. The Taming of the Shrew :
-- Curtis: ' Away, you three-inch fool! '
-- Grumio: ' Am I but three inches? Why, thy horn is a foot, and so long am I at the least.'

(2) Lawrence Paros, The Erotic Tongue (1984) about the word yard: ' By 1850 it had become obsolete. Yet the yard lives on in every man's fantasy, though the details of the fantasy clash. We have the old adage, " Short and thick does the trick " (18 ^th C), as well as Robert Burns's " Nine inch will please a lady " while contemporary folk hyperbole immortalizes the man with a nine-inch pr**k and a twelve-inch tongue who can breathe through his ears . In our world, however, it's the three-inch fool ( The Taming of the Shrew ) who clearly is the rule.'