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Foolscap is a large size of paper, especially paper for writing on. It belongs to older British school and office life — letters, reports, exam scripts — from before A4 became the normal sheet. The paper is taller than the sheets most students use today, so old foolscap files often do not sit in a modern folder. You still meet the word in British writing and in talk from older people; younger speakers usually just say A4. In this use it is not a hat, though the name probably comes from one.
大頁書寫紙（舊時英國紙張尺寸）。台灣日常都說 A4，這個詞多半只會在英國書或舊檔案裡見到。
組成Probably from a watermark of a fool’s cap: a faint picture of the pointed hat a king’s clown wore, once made into the paper and visible when you hold the sheet up to the light. The name stuck to the size of paper that carried that mark.
同家族的字
- fool's capthe clown’s hat in the old watermark; this paper size was probably named after that picture
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
foolscapnoun/ˈfuːl.skæp/
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Writing paper sheets measuring 13.25 × 16.5 inches.
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Such a sheet folded or cut in half, thus approximately 8 × 13.25 inches.
- At twilight in the summer there is never anybody to fear—man, woman, or cat—in the chambers and at that hour the mice come out. They do not eat parchment or foolscap or red tape, but they eat the luncheon crumbs.
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Printing paper measuring 13.5 × 17 inches.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。