silly

CEFRA2

/ˈsɪl.i/

noun · adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    Not sensible or showing poor judgment.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    Blessed, Good; pious.

Examples

  • I need to ask you a silly question.

  • It was silly of you to trust them.

At a glance

Sits at A2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
1

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Laughable or amusing through foolishness or a foolish appearance.

  2. Absurdly large.

  3. Good; pious.

More examples

In context

  • He cannot achieve celebrity by covering himself with diamonds... or by giving a silly price for a hack.

  • They were laughing at a silly joke.

  • The sylyman lay and herde, / And hys wyf answerd.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The children told a blank joke that made everyone laugh, though it was not clever.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English seely, sēlī, from Old English sǣliġ, ġesǣliġ (“lucky, fortunate”), from Proto-West Germanic *sālīg, from *sāli; equivalent to seel (“happiness, bliss”) + -y. Doublet of Seelie. The semantic evolution is “lucky” to “innocent” to “naive” to “foolish”. Compare the similar evolution of daft (originally meaning “accommodating”), and almost the reverse with nice (originally meaning “ignorant”).