Inane vs Flippant - What's the difference?
inane | flippant |
Lacking sense or meaning (often to the point of boredom or annoyance).
purposeless; pointless
* I. Taylor
That which is void or empty.
* Locke
*1881 , :
(archaic) glib; speaking with ease and rapidity
* Barrow
nimble; limber.
Showing disrespect through a casual attitude, levity, and a lack of due seriousness; pert.
* Burke
* 1998 , , The Metaphysical Touch
* 2000 , Anthony Howard and Jason Cowley, Decline and Fall, New Statesman, March 13, 2000
* 2004 , , The Easy Way to Stop Smoking , page 147
As adjectives the difference between inane and flippant
is that inane is lacking sense or meaning (often to the point of boredom or annoyance) while flippant is (archaic) glib; speaking with ease and rapidity.As a noun inane
is that which is void or empty.inane
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- This supremely gifted kid told me that in the early elementary grades, the songs sung in music class were so inane that he wanted to skip grades already! Eventually he did, so better late than never.
- Vague and inane instincts.
Synonyms
* (lacking sense) silly, fatuous, vapidDerived terms
* inanely * inanityNoun
(en noun)- The undistinguishable inane of infinite space.
- [...] whom we watch as we watch the clouds careering in the windy, bottomless inane , or read about like characters in ancient and rather fabulous annals.
Anagrams
* ----flippant
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- It becometh good men, in such cases, to be flippant and free in their speech.
- a sort of flippant , vain discourse
- The conversations had grown more adult over the years—she was less flippant , at least.
- In the mid-1950s we both wrote for the same weekly, where her contributions were a good deal more serious and less flippant than mine.
- Our society treats smoking flippantly as a slightly distasteful habit that can injure your health. It is not. It is drug addiction.