Meaning
Furious or noisy tumult that in the end amounts to nothing - uproar without meaning or result. Usually allusive and ironic, applied to storms of protest, media frenzies or bluster that subside without effect. Literary in register, and thanks to Faulkner's novel it carries a strong tragic undertone of futility. The sense has widened from life as an idiot's meaningless tale to any loud but empty episode. Literary and allusive; usually ironic about uproar that accomplishes nothing. Regional use: General English (Shakespearean origin).
Origin
Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5. Told 'The Queen, my lord, is dead', Macbeth answers with the 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' soliloquy, which closes: 'It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing' (Folger text). The wording is Shakespeare's, though the fixed phrase circulated little before the twentieth century. William Faulkner took 'The Sound and the Fury' as the title of his 1929 novel, whose opening section is narrated by Benjy Compson, a cognitively disabled man - a direct play on the 'tale told by an idiot' - and the novel's fame fixed the expression in general English as shorthand for noisy, futile uproar.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
- sound and fury
Usage Examples
- The online petition generated plenty of sound and fury, but the council's decision stood.
- After weeks of sound and fury in the transfer window, the club signed a reserve goalkeeper.
- Her resignation letter was all sound and fury, signifying nothing, since the merger had already been agreed.