Word of the Day

: July 13, 2012

silly season

noun SIL-ee-SEE-zun

What It Means

1 : a period (as late summer) when the mass media often focus on trivial or frivolous matters for lack of major news stories

2 : a period marked by frivolous, outlandish, or illogical activity or behavior

silly season in Context

As a real news junkie, Christa is always annoyed when the silly season settles on the newsroom of the local paper, and the front page is dominated with pictures of dogs and soft stories about summer apparel.

Did You Know?

"Silly season" was coined in the mid-19th century to describe the time when journalists face a bit of a conundrum: Washington is on summer break and European governments are on vacation, but the columns of space newspapers typically devote to politics must still be filled - hence stories about beating the heat and how celebrities are also managing to do so. The idea is comical, really, since there's always something going on somewhere. P.G. Wodehouse understood the absurdity inherent in the term when he wrote in his 1909 comic novel, The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved English, "It was inevitable, in the height of the Silly Season, that such a topic as the simultaneous invasion of Great Britain by nine foreign powers should be seized upon by the press." Inevitable indeed.