Word of the Day
: April 8, 2024fatuous
playWhat It Means
To describe something, such as an idea or remark, as fatuous is to say that it is foolish or silly rather than sensible or logical.
// Our hopes for an apology and a reasonable explanation for the error were met with fatuous platitudes.
fatuous in Context
"... when I was first admitted to the emergency room at Swedish's hospital in Edmonds, a doctor asked me whether I was right- or left-handed, and when I said left, he said, 'That's lucky'—a remark I took to be verging on the fatuous. But since then I've read that a considerable portion of left-handed people ... have their verbal and cognitive facilities located in the right hemisphere of the brain, which would explain my relative ease in talking, thinking, and remembering, despite my hemiplegia ..." — Jonathan Raban, Father and Son: A Memoir, 2023
Did You Know?
"I am two fools, I know, / For loving, and for saying so / In whining Poetry," wrote John Donne, simultaneously confessing to both infatuation and fatuousness. As any love-struck fool can attest, infatuation can make buffoons of the best of us, and so it is reasonable that the words fatuous and infatuation share the same Latin root, fatuus, meaning "foolish." Both terms have been part of English since the 17th century, though infatuation followed the earlier verb infatuate, a fatuus descendant that once meant "to make foolish" but that now usually means "to inspire with a foolish love or admiration."
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Name That Synonym
Unscramble the letters to create a synonym of fatuous meaning "foolish": EIINNSA.
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