seward's folly

1. 1.

   the transaction in 1867 in which the United States Secretary of State William Henry Seward purchased Alaska from Russia

   Broadertransaction

Questions about seward's folly

What does seward's folly mean?

seward's folly means "the transaction in 1867 in which the United States Secretary of State William Henry Seward purchased Alaska from Russia".

Is seward's folly a common word?

seward's folly is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.