How to Use witless in a Sentence

witless

adjective
  • He committed a witless blunder.
  • The hapless and witless stars of the show are trying to escape the clutches of a pursuing demon.
    Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 23 Mar. 2018
  • Lewis’s films in the 1960s got mixed reviews in the U.S., with detractors calling his characters forced, grating and witless.
    Heather Burke, Bloomberg.com, 20 Aug. 2017
  • This would be a very smart game plan for someone who has no real facts and is hoping someone else will be witless enough to out their own secret scheming.
    Ariana Romero, refinery29.com, 15 June 2021
  • More than 8,000 people gathered in Birmingham for a common cause: not to trade barbs and witless repartee, but to celebrate the game that they (we) all love.
    Vlad Savov, The Verge, 30 May 2018
  • Think back on the pathetic rollout of the travel ban, the witless legal defenses, and the serial losses at the courts of appeals.
    Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine, 12 July 2017
  • Some of the more witless pundits mock all this as mere conspiracy theory.
    John Kass, Twin Cities, 26 Dec. 2019
  • How many Americans seem to have forgotten the simplest tool of dealing with witless boors, kooks and bullies: Ignore them.
    Chris Stirewalt, Fox News, 31 May 2017
  • The picture is slick but dull, glitzy but witless, expensively boring.
    Kyle Smith, National Review, 27 May 2021
  • An opening sequence sets the film's terror-thriller tone by sending witless corporate goons to retrieve a fossil.
    Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 22 June 2018
  • Unfortunately, the presidency has supplanted the House in its role as witless and slavering tribune of the plebs.
    Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 27 Aug. 2019
  • Conversation is limited to witless small talk about the weather.
    Rena Gross, Billboard, 30 May 2018
  • Outrage at the media, with journalists as unwitting (or witless) straight men, is a surefire GOP money-raiser.
    Jake Bernstein, The New York Review of Books, 8 Apr. 2020
  • And those who are too witless to understand, or pretend witlessness so as to herd others for partisan reasons, do no service to their nation.
    John Kass, Twin Cities, 27 June 2019
  • But he’s not always in control of his material, including some cheap shots that slide into witless sexism.
    New York Times, 23 Dec. 2021
  • And the more witless among them have already reverted to their default positions: tribal hooting, while comparing anyone who disagrees with them to Hitler.
    John Kass, chicagotribune.com, 12 Dec. 2019
  • The idea that only weak and/or witless individuals get involved is also way off (see: the list of bold-faced-names associated with Nxivm).
    Courtney Shea, refinery29.com, 3 June 2019
  • This 1836 work — in which a witless fop is assumed to be a powerful state functionary by corrupt politicians in the provinces — infuses scathing satire with giddy surrealism.
    Ben Brantley, New York Times, 24 May 2017
  • My favorite element, which mirrors my mystification at the matter-of-factness of the image, is an adorably witless donkey.
    Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 8 Feb. 2021
  • So when the state opened eligibility to anyone old enough to drive, masses of Minnesotans logged onto vaccine appointment websites for the very first time, full of witless optimism.
    Star Tribune, 1 Apr. 2021
  • But it it is also rooted in French soil, where anti-Semitism — even von Trier's bumbling, halfhearted, witless excuse for anti-Semitism — is not something taken lightly.
    Justin Chang, latimes.com, 15 May 2018
  • In these stretches of the film, Everybody Knows could almost tip into Michael Haneke territory, the rot and chaos of contemporary society consuming these witless people who are slaves to their own selfish impulses.
    Richard Lawson, HWD, 9 May 2018
  • Once again, witless pundits, economists and politicians don’t understand what’s happening.
    John Tamny, Forbes, 6 June 2021
  • Evil peasants, dead ignorant, witless mud-wallowers, emmerdeurs, smugglers, thieves.
    Ew Staff, EW.com, 3 Aug. 2021
  • Yes, for his ignorance of company policy but, more importantly, for his witless inexperience with the basic tenets of successful human interaction.
    Ana Veciana-Suarez, miamiherald, 15 Aug. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'witless.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: