silly

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Foolish or showing a lack of good sense, often in an amusing way.

   They were laughing at a silly joke.

2. 2
   adj

   Foolish enough to deserve pity or scorn.

   It was silly of him to spend all his money so quickly.

3. 3
   adj

   Dazed or confused, as if from repeated blows.

   He was knocked silly by the impact.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Silly is a late Middle English alteration of seely, from an ancient root meaning “luck” or “happiness.” Old English seely meant “happy, fortunate, or blessed,” then developed through “holy” and “innocent or deserving of pity” before silly acquired its dominant sense “foolish” in the late 16th century.

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”).

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary