foolhardilyadv.

a1382 Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.) (Bodl. 959) (1963) 2 Kings xviii. 13 If I hadde don aȝens my soule foolhardily [L. audacter].

1540 J. Palsgrave tr. G. Gnapheus Comedye of Acolastus i. iii. sig. G Thou shalte weepe full bytterlye (for this geare) that thou nowe goest about foolyshely .i. foole hardyly.

1609 P. Holland tr. Ammianus Marcellinus Rom. Hist. xix. iv. 127 Who..used foole-hardily to sallie forth and fight most courageously.

1701 Divine Right Convocations 27 Great Bullies, for all their loud hectoring, soon cool again, and think it better to sleep in a whole Skin, than to act as Fool-hardily as they talk.

1778 Public Advertiser 24 July Nothing could have induced them to have entered upon it, or at least Fool-hardily to have persisted in it, but a pre-determined Resolution to annihilate the Liberty of the Subject.

1879 G. MacDonald Sir Gibbie I. xix. 251 I would not foolhardily add to my many risks of blundering.

1940 Kenyon Rev. 2 395 Strangely enough, it was he himself who had foolhardily provoked the whole scandal by bringing an action against the heirs of his former publisher.

2018 Chicago Daily Herald (Nexis) 1 July 14 This special group of international journalists who go bravely, if sometimes foolhardily, from war to war.