silly

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (2)  · 
“
I was scared silly--silly, I tell you.

View all »
Definitions (21)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Exhibiting a lack of wisdom or good sense; foolish. See Synonyms at foolish.
  2. adjective Lacking seriousness or responsibleness; frivolous: indulged in silly word play; silly pet names for each other.
  3. adjective Semiconscious; dazed: knocked silly by the impact.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (12)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (5)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • De Gier liked the melody but the words were kind of silly, as they often are in music. —  Hard Rain - Janwillem van de Wetering - Grijpstra-de Gier 11
  • "It's kind of silly, all this furor over that thing Doc said, "It's clever--very clever Then he did another thing that surprised him. —  101 - The Green Eagle
  • Nowadays that's a byword for a silly waste of intellectual effort, but in medieval times that was actually the pretty much the same basic inquiry as modern particle physics: a question about the absolute limits of space and material being. —  F ;SF; - vol 087 issue 01 - July 1994
  • I felt silly, asking for clarification on make-believe. —  Stephenie Meyer - Twilight
  • It was silly, after everything we'd been through tonight, how that little promise sent flutters through my stomach, and made me unable to speak. —  Stephenie Meyer - Twilight
More examples »
 

Tags

silly hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Words tagged silly

Stats

This word has been looked up 212 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

foolish ·  ugly ·  wicked ·  funny ·  vulgar ·  crazy ·  miserable ·  pathetic

Used in the same contextWord Family

silly:   sillier ·  silliest
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English seli, silli, blessed, innocent, hapless, from Old English gesælig, blessed.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. A modern form, with shortened vowel, of early modern English seely: see seely. This is one of the few instances in which an orig. long e (ee) has become shortened to i. The same change occurs in breeches, and in the American pron. of been, with no change in spelling.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈsɪli/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a day.

Recently looked up

troubleshooting · woebegone · slovenliness · Casale · steersman

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Ipanema · k for teria · a for a disiac · American · qroqqadile