{"id":16525,"date":"2018-03-06T10:21:45","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T18:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=16525"},"modified":"2018-02-25T22:59:42","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T06:59:42","slug":"foil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2018\/03\/06\/foil\/","title":{"rendered":"foil"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>I\u2019ve heard characters described as <i>foils<\/i> of other characters since I was a kid, but I think I always figured that meant that one character could foil another character\u2019s plans or something. It wasn\u2019t until a few years ago that I learned the <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/Foil\">real etymology<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>Jewelers often put shiny metal foil underneath a gem to make the stone shine brighter. A literary foil serves a similar purpose. This character highlights someone else's trait, usually by contrast.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p>(Note: The above link is to TV Tropes, which can be a gigantic time sink if you\u2019re not careful.)<\/p>\r\n<p>The other meaning of <i>foil<\/i> that I alluded to above, as in \u201cShe foiled their plans,\u201d turns out to be from a Middle English word <i>fullen<\/i>, which, if I\u2019m understanding the etymology in my dictionary right, referred to making cloth fuller. I\u2019m not sure what the connection is between fulling cloth (I didn\u2019t know until now that <i>full<\/i> was a verb) and thwarting someone.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16525"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17103,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525\/revisions\/17103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}