What's the difference between fatuous and idiotic?

Fatuous


Definition:

  • (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.

Idiotic


Definition:

  • (a.) Alt. of Idiotical

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Thrasher Mitchell: Then why is that idiot Bernard Hogan-Howe getting a knighthood when his plebby plods tried to stitch me up?
  • (2) According to Deborah Mattinson, his pollster, Brown " loved slogans and believed them to be imbued with a mystical power capable of persuading the most intransigent voter", and therefore went a bundle on them – not least " A future fair for all ", the surreal dud with which Labour went to the country in 2010, following 2005's equally idiotic " forward not back ".
  • (3) But cowardly useful idiots of Warwick have banned @MaryamNamazie.” On Sunday night the union released a statement reversing the decision, which it stated had gone against normal procedures.
  • (4) Aren't the older generation always going to think kids are idiots?
  • (5) Treating voters like idiots doesn't often work – so the posters with a picture of a sick baby, saying, "She needs a new cardiac facility not an alternative voting system", or of the soldier, reading, "He needs bulletproof vests, not an alternative voting system", must surely be an insult too far to the public's intelligence.
  • (6) The boss of a successful US hedge fund has quit the industry with an extraordinary farewell letter dismissing his rivals as over-privileged "idiots" and thanking "stupid" traders for making him rich.
  • (7) Who can complain of physical fear, of the nightmare of a baby eating its way out of your abdomen, of the loss of professional autonomy, staring at a stranger's idiotic grin?
  • (8) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Flynn in 2016: ‘When you’re given immunity, you’ve probably committed a crime’ – video Vladimir Putin’s Russia is generally regarded as America’s mightiest enemy, however idiotic this might be.
  • (9) Whatever they'd gone through in the past, they were idiots for not understanding the modern world.
  • (10) If he was on the verge of becoming a "national treasure" to the minuscule percentage of the nation who could identify him by name were they shown a picture of him, this latest episode will have reminded them that there really are bigger and better idiots in public life to get behind.
  • (11) This is the most pathetic thing I’ve seen in my whole time in the United States Senate … I think they ought to stop posturing and acting like idiots.” Sean Spicer , the White House press secretary, branded the Democrats’ actions “embarrassing”.
  • (12) I picture myself at 80, the idiot who did something faddish instead of what people had always done and can never retire.
  • (13) But it is often said that only an idiot fights a war on two fronts.
  • (14) April 14, 2015 _Ds73_ (@darkeststar73) @sueperkins complete idiots think they can say what they like, glad we're not all the same !
  • (15) Many on the Right still view it as the epitome of all that was irresponsible, idiotic and dangerous about the Sixties, while many on the terminally fractured Left still mourn 1968 as the last great moment of revolutionary possibility.
  • (16) "But she also divides the critics like that other old-school oddball, Norman Wisdom, who was written off as a witless, irritating idiot with a penchant for falling over by some, and seen as a comic genius by others."
  • (17) "Oh, it says, 'You'll regret this one day, you idiot.'"
  • (18) 12.25pm: "Björn Lubbers mentioned in his email you posted at 10am that 'the Dutchies are a very friendly, hospitable and tolerant people, but humans will be humans and idiots will be idiots ...', emails Karin Prill.
  • (19) Every magistrate hears idiotic excuses from stupid criminals, but this is the DWP's unsubtle nudge that all claimants are fraudsters beneath the skin.
  • (20) I'll be cheering for Germany, and should we advance, hide my Germany-hat as deeply as possible in my backpack on the way home ... the Dutchies are a very friendly, hospitable and tolerant people, but humans will be humans and idiots will be idiots ... my cousin, also living in the Netherlands, is taking off his German license plate off his car and parking it deep inside an underground garage ...