A gullible or easily deceived person; someone who is foolish or credulous and believes things too quickly.
From French 'badaud,' of uncertain origin, possibly related to Old French 'badere' meaning to gape or stare foolishly. The word entered English in the 16th-17th centuries from French sources, describing a person of simple understanding.
Paris's Musée du Louvre still guards a tradition of the 'badaud'—tourists gullibly believing any street performer's tall tale—showing how this 400-year-old word captures a timeless human vulnerability to charming con artists and too-good-to-be-true stories.
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