The word "harebrained" is correct and can be used in written English.
It is an adjective that means foolish or ill-advised. For example, you could say: "I thought it was harebrained for him to move to a foreign country without any money or a place to stay."
Put like that, it sounds muddled, not to say harebrained, but "The Lady Eve" is a model of clarity.
Often the leading anti-Communists were so harebrained in their rhetoric or so repugnant in their positions on other issues — race and the war in Vietnam being but two — that there was no way the left could find a common language with them.
"Before that committee convened, whatever harebrained and wild allegation or story came up had instant credence," McCain told me.
"It wasn't completely harebrained, but looking back, the business was completely weak," he said.
A federal judge has denied what he called a "harebrained" motion by Rod Blagojevich's lawyers over what they claimed was potential misconduct by the jury forewoman at his retrial.
It may be harebrained or hopelessly out of touch, but if you don't have a rosy outlook, you don't belong here.
Mr. Manglitz has come back with what the senator called a "harebrained scheme" to convert to compressed natural gas, an ambitious promise that is off on the distant technological horizon.
They reject the harebrained notion that friends uniting harmoniously have meaningful bearing on the formation of a contender compared with configuring a team that actually makes competitive sense.
Smart, self-possessed and yet capable of expressing genuine emotion, her Nancy Carey in "Summer Magic" was resourceful enough to rescue her family's ailing fortunes, if childlike enough to do so through a harebrained scheme.
"Moby-Duck" succeeds as harebrained adventure, as a cautionary environmental tale, as a deconstruction of consumer demand, and as a meditation on wilderness and imagination.
Perhaps the greatest asset demonstrated by Mr. Williams in music and fashion is the ability to look at a market and recognize what is not yet there, or, to put it another way, to champion ideas that are potentially great, even if at first they seem a little... well, harebrained.
