(a.) Feeble in mind; weak; silly; stupid; foolish; fatuitous.
(a.) Without reality; illusory, like the ignis fatuus.
Example Sentences:
(1) There certainly has been a danger that the dispute could be diverted into a chauvinistic blind alley, not least because of the cue given by Brown's cynical and fatuous use of the British National Party's slogan "British jobs for British workers", which was then thrown back in his face by the strikers.
(2) So far, the president has been more fatuous than fascistic, though he belatedly realized what an albatross the bill had become.
(3) Yet such is Britain's fatuously entitled "war on drugs".
(4) First, Brazil did not have any penalty appeals against Mexico , so the media’s thick-headed behaviour could not have triggered the inevitable payback on this occasion, rendering Scolari’s complaint somewhat fatuous, at least in terms of what had just happened.
(5) But likewise, insisting on economic deprivation, as though that is the sole context and alone explains their motivations, is only marginally less fatuous.
(6) It's not quite believable that height is unimportant to Sellar, although he's right that it's fatuous to chase superlatives, given that the Shard does not quite equal the 82-year-old Chrysler building in New York.
(7) Iran's religious minorities are arrested on fatuous charges, endure trials that violate the state's own due process, are jailed on unproven convictions and tortured in prison.
(8) Even if you think the Twitter storms about political “misspeaks” and “gaffes” are fatuous, consider what you did not hear after the PM’s outburst last week.
(9) This involves tight prioritisation – allowing yourself a certain amount of time per task – and trying not to get caught up in less productive activities, such as unstructured meetings that tend to take up lots of time.” We’ve all been there, wishing we weren’t stuck in the same room as a bunch of fatuous blowhards – or, as Michael Foley puts it in his superb book The Age of Absurdity , “the colleagues who speak at length in every meeting, in loud confident tones that suggest critical independence, but never deviate from the official line”.
(10) In addition, these studies also risk annoying the project's youngsters by asking them questions they perceive to be intrusive or fatuous.
(11) The prize in his view, though, is "not about who's the best: I think that's fatuous".
(12) When Phillips first spoke of sleepwalking 10 years ago , even David Miliband tut-tutted, calling his concerns “fatuous”.
(13) In this respect, the idea of "saving for the nation" is fatuous, jingoistic nonsense.
(14) ■ "Wittering inanity", "Fatuous", "Pass the jubilee sickbag".
(15) Shaun Spiers Chief executive, Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) • The government’s plans to build 13,000 houses for sale at just 20% off ludicrous market values is a fatuous response to the biggest housing crisis since the second world war.
(16) All the money and clothes and fatuous conversation have driven Bateman mad, we might think.
(17) "Let us quit this indecent exercise of fatuous plaints, including raising hopes, even now, with talk of 'posthumous' conferment, when you know damned well that the Nobel committee does not indulge in such tradition.
(18) Not a Brexit conspiracy, but assuredly an inspiration for Boris Johnson’s fatuous and burbling battle cry of “ Independence day !” Now the Tory leadership campaign has begun and, incredibly, movie advertising is again playing its role.
(19) A failure to recognise this distinctiveness was well demonstrated in last year's fatuous talk about the Olympics' "growth dividend".
(20) In the decades that followed, Frost became a media personality and comedian, as comfortable cross-examining the most heavyweight political figures of the day as hosting Through the Keyhole, the show typifying the fatuousness of celebrity culture, in which panellists were given a video tour of a mystery famous guest's property and asked to identify the owner from the evidence.
Foolishness
Definition:
(n.) The quality of being foolish.
(n.) A foolish practice; an absurdity.
Example Sentences:
(1) So, logic would dictate that if Greeks are genuinely in favour of reform – and opinion polls have consistently shown wide support for many of the structural changes needed – they would be foolish to give these two parties another chance.
(2) It would be foolish to bet that Saudi Arabia will exist in its current form a generation from now.” Memories of how the Saudis and Opec deliberately triggered an economic crisis in the west in retaliation for US aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war still rankle.
(3) That's foolish, because Real Madrid rarely look more uncomfortable than at set pieces.
(4) "We regret that Congress was forced to waste its time voting on a foolish bill that was premised entirely on false claims and ignorance," David Jenkins, an REP official, said in a statement.
(5) Shorten said while Hicks was “foolish to get caught up in the Afghanistan conflict” the court decision showed an injustice.
(6) Many commentators considered the suggestion merely foolish, but computer hackers issued death threats against her and her children, which she promptly posted on Twitter, along with the defiant message: "Get stuffed, losers.
(7) And it means that if Labour were to win, Mr Brown would be very foolish, indeed downright wrong, to move Mr Darling.
(8) "It was a certain kind of titillation the shop offered," the critic Matthew Collings has written, "sexual but also hopeless, destructive, foolish, funny, sad."
(9) Describing the moment McKellen knocked on his dressing room door he said: “I ushered him in nervously, expecting notes for my poor performance or indiscipline – I was a foolish, naughty young actor.
(10) But what people did when they were young and foolish, or even when they were not yet public figures, is not always the same.
(11) While we have this, it would be foolish to pursue a policy of still constraining resources in the acute sector.
(12) All three echoed remarks made recently by the Bank’s governor, Mark Carney, who said it would be “foolish” to cut rates in response to a temporary fall in inflation.
(13) Since the initially peaceful demonstrations against his regime began more than three years ago, he has proved himself, by turns, foolish, craven and vicious.
(14) In a high-risk, 65-minute speech in Manchester delivered without notes, and 20 minutes longer than he intended, Miliband tried to take the mantle of the 19th-century Tory prime minister Benjamin Disraeli's one nation, pointedly grabbing the territory and language of the centre ground which he believes David Cameron has foolishly vacated.
(15) But one backbencher, West Australian Liberal Dennis Jensen , has said it is foolish to set up a $20bn medical research fund at the same time as the government is cutting money from scientific agencies, including the CSIRO and the Australian Research Council.
(16) Donald Trump is too weak, too foolish and too chaotic to see beyond the immediate crises he has created.
(17) Here, too, Capote displayed uncanny journalistic skills, capturing even the most languid and enigmatic of subjects – Brando in his pomp – and eliciting the kinds of confidences that left the actor reflecting ruefully on his "unutterable foolishness".
(18) They privately acknowledge they were foolish in taking the bait, but argue they have broken no rules since they were offered no jobs, and therefore have no commercial interests to declare in the MPs' register.
(19) "Hopefully, the lesson is to stop this foolish childishness," McCain said Thursday on CNN.
(20) The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.” As for the social conditions that obtain: “It is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.” Looking back on my political activism of the 1970s and 80s, there was a lot of refusing to accept existing conditions on the basis that they were “wrong and foolish”.