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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Not interesting; dull: "and there pour forth jejune words and useless empty phrases” ( Anthony Trollope).
  2. adj. Lacking maturity; childish: surprised by their jejune responses to our problems.
  3. adj. Lacking in nutrition: a jejune diet.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Scantily supplied or furnished; attenuated; poor.
  2. Barren; unfurnished; wanting pith or interest, as a literary production; devoid of sense or knowledge, as a person; dry; uninteresting; shallow.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Not nutritious.
  2. adj. Lacking matter; empty; devoid of substance.
  3. adj. Naive; simplistic.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Lacking matter; empty; void of substance.
  2. adj. Void of interest; barren; meager; dry.
  3. adj. Juvenile; childish; immature.
  4. adj. Lacking nutritional value.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. lacking in nutritive value
  2. adj. displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity
  3. adj. lacking interest or significance or impact

Etymologies

  1. From Latin iēiūnus, meager, dry, fasting.

Examples

  • “Quigley explained why he loves the word "jejune'' - "it just looks like a wrong word; it's crazy, I would never use it in conversation'' - and talks about personalities we both admire, such as Rex Parker, the self-proclaimed "king of CrossWorld'', Elizabeth Gorski, and the men he calls the "Three Jesuses'' of crosswords: Patrick Berry, Mike Shenk and Frank Longo.”

    Boston.com Top Stories

  • “Will someone please call the jejune nutjobs in Seattle and tell them to GROW THE FUCK UP?”

    Queerty

  • “Arguably, Alyosha's religion * is* "jejune" at that point; he has not yet undergone his crisis after the death of Father Zossima.”

    Balkinization

  • “Further, although I disagree with your characterization of Alyosha's religious faith as "jejune," couldn't the same description apply with equal force to Ivan's atheism?”

    Balkinization

  • “Yet ironically, two television programs aimed at young people and animated by a kind of jejune foolery -- Jon Stewart's Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report -- sell a great many books, more perhaps than more traditional "adult venues," and far more than newspaper reviews.”

    Benjamin R. Barber: Doing Colbert (and Being Done by Him!)

  • “And Hazlitt's judgment on him, that he is "jejune" and”

    A History of Elizabethan Literature

  • “Sweet jeebus, when god created the word, "jejune," he was thinking of dear Meghan. by: you @ soon”

    Pam's House Blend - Front Page

  • “If a new movie you have been looking forward to has been described as jejune by reputable sources what would be your best course of action? a.) wait until it comes out in June”

    infoplease - Daily Almanac

  • “So rather than dwell on the neat category "fraud," maybe we should be thinking in terms of jejune Chinese executives colliding with the nuanced expectations of Western stock investors.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Is Every Chinese Firm a Scam?

  • “The Louisiana governor, alternately smug and jejune, articulated precisely the ideology — those G.O.P. “policies” in the Times/CBS poll — that Americans reject: the conviction that government is useless and has no role in an emergency.”

    Sunday Reading

Show 10 more examples...

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘jejune’.

Comments

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  • blafferty This word is ill-suited. Apr 30, 2011

  • jorge999

    April, cruel as ever, left us sick and out of tune,
    grown too old together, we sat among our runes,
    and listless May came afterward, followed by jejune
    --jorge999 Nov 4, 2009

  • madmouth gonna have to stop chewing on the maps, yaar Jun 24, 2009

  • bilby How did a bit of Korea get in my gastrointestinal tract? Jun 24, 2009

  • emil I always think about the jejunum when jejune comes up. It's the part of the small intestine sandwiched between the duodenum and ileum. It's probably the least interesting part of the gastrointestinal tract, as nothing really significant happens - which is how I would use the word, to mean uninteresting and insignificant. Jun 24, 2009

  • eliseivy i will say one thing. there are some words that are still backed with their original meaning when used by certain people. this may not be the context expected but that is exactly why it works.

    NICK CAVE
    jejune as used in a recent song "i call upon the author to explain". and he just tosses that stuff off like its nothing. like "malanderer". all intellectuals be damned. he rules the english language. Mar 16, 2009

  • dontcry Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on...Will he come? The jejune jesuit.
    --Ulysses,by James Joyce pg.4 (1922 edition) May 29, 2008

  • d4divine this word is an expression of disapproval when you want to criticise someone for being simple and unsophisticated...in other WORDS dull and boring May 29, 2008

  • reesetee That could be it. But I don't remember for sure. Apr 10, 2008

  • bilby Isn't it the month before Jejulie in the French calendar? Apr 10, 2008

  • bilby Uhh... Apr 10, 2008

  • chained_bear I dislike feeling BLASE. It's not a hate so much as... well, I'm apathetic about it. Almost like... blasé. ;) Apr 9, 2008

  • reesetee Wajo, I think Prolagus is joking with bilby. :-)

    Bilby, did you ever figure out what jejune means? I can never remember. Apr 9, 2008

  • wajo22 something that is jejune is dull, uninteresting, unsatisfying, devoid of nourishment, substance, and significance. A Jejune speech will definitely leave you BLASE Apr 9, 2008

  • Prolagus What does jejune mean, bilby? Apr 9, 2008

  • chained_bear Yeah, they seem much the same thing to me. Apr 9, 2008

  • wajo22 The meaning of Jejune, a young and naive person, is now obsolete. The current meaning is Vapid ( lacking juices) Apr 9, 2008

  • chained_bear Aw, man, my comment disappeared. Isn't there some similarity between this term and the French word for spring, or something? That's the only way I remember that it can mean a young, naive person. The problem I have with this word is always thinking it's spelled wrong; I always want to spell it jejeune. Apr 9, 2008

  • bilby It's almost time to look up jejune again. Apr 9, 2008

  • Prolagus The latter two weirdnet definitions could also be seen as a comment. Apr 9, 2008

  • pterodactyl I suffer from the same problem, pbilby. I think my brain is stuffed so full of esoteric words that whenever I try to relearn "jejune", the definition utterly fails to stick in my mind.

    Is there a word for this phenomenon? Apr 9, 2008

  • bilby I might list jejune if I knew what it meant. Apr 9, 2008

  • bilby As of 5.13pm today I have accepted that I will never remember the meaning of this word. I look it up, it's ho-hum, the word kind of sounds okay, bang, it's gone in thirty seconds. Again and again I've done this. As much as my singing is witheringly tuneless, my life is jejuneless. Apr 9, 2008

  • plumpesdenken Bew pays close attention to the preoccupation of many Victorian intellectuals with Ireland, and deals with the ideas of Mill and others without falling into the jejeune generalisations of post-colonial critique. Foster Dec 13, 2007

  • yarb I can't stomach this word. There's something grossly dinner-party about it. I can't bear hearing it. It sounds like an unusually vomitous dessert. Nov 29, 2007

  • brtom ... Petulance (and its child by Desuetude, Disgust) up against the moronic Starry-Eyed, jejune Rabble-Rouse spitting at the feet of Big Dictum ...
    John Latta, Isola di Rifiuti

    This is a good example of the amazingly worded wilderness through which Mr. Latta cuts his path ... I think of the jungles of Henri Rousseau ... Dec 19, 2006

‘jejune’ has been looked up 5415 times, loved by 46 people, added to 242 lists, commented on 26 times, and has a Scrabble score of 12.