fond [ME] The root of both fond and fun is the medieval word fon, which meant ‘a fool’. Fond originally meant ‘foolish, silly’, or ‘mad’, and did not acquire the modern sense ‘affectionate’ until the end of the 16th century—Shakespeare appears to have been the first to use ‘fond of’, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Someone you are fond of came to be called a fondling in the mid 17th century. The word may have fallen out of use, but lives on in to fondle, formed from fondling in the late 17th century, originally with the sense ‘to pamper’, with the caress sense in use by the late 18th century.