Fatuous vs Silly - What's the difference?
fatuous | silly |
Obnoxiously stupid, vacantly silly, content in one's foolishness.
(label) Pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless.
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , I.vi:
* (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
* (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) (1772-1834)
(label) Simple, unsophisticated, ordinary; rustic, ignorant.
* 1633 , (John Donne), "Sapho to Philænis":
* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
* (John Milton) (1608-1674)
Foolish, showing a lack of good sense and wisdom; frivolous, trifling.
Irresponsible, showing irresponsible behaviors.
Semiconscious, witless.
(label) Of a fielding position, very close to the batsman; closer than short.
Simple, not intelligent, unrefined.
* {{quote-book, year=1935, author=
, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=1
, passage=“Anthea hasn't a notion in her head but to vamp a lot of silly mugwumps. She's set her heart on that tennis bloke
(label) Happy; fortunate; blessed.
(label) Harmless; innocent; inoffensive.
* (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
* Robynson (More's Utopia)
(colloquial) A silly person; a fool.
(colloquial) A mistake.
As adjectives the difference between fatuous and silly
is that fatuous is obnoxiously stupid, vacantly silly, content in one's foolishness while silly is (label) pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless.As a noun silly is
(colloquial) a silly person; a fool.fatuous
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- To compare the intelligence levels of men and women is itself fatuous .
Usage notes
* Refers especially to foolishness and disregard of reality.Synonyms
* (obnoxiously stupid) childish, imbecilic, inane, insipid, puerilesilly
English
Adjective
(er)- A silly man, in simple weedes forworne, / And soild with dust of the long dried way; / His sandales were with toilesome trauell torne, / And face all tand with scorching sunny ray
- After long storms with which my silly bark was tossed sore.
- The silly buckets on the deck.
- For, if we justly call each silly man'' / A ''little island , What shall we call thee than?
- A fourth man, in a silly habit.
- All that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
George Goodchild
- (Chaucer)
- The silly virgin strove him to withstand.
- A silly , innocent hare murdered of a dog.