What's the difference between loony and silly?

Loony


Definition:

  • (a.) See Luny.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) His initial instinct – that the party was full of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” – had much to be said for it, but did nothing to stop Ukip’s march.
  • (2) David Cameron described them as "a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists".
  • (3) This is not the Monster Raving Loony Party; he recoils at the very suggestion.
  • (4) But before long, Hodge had gone into local politics, getting elected to what was then considered a “loony left” council in Islington that raised the red flag and had a bust of Lenin in the town hall.
  • (5) It was London, and our loony left ideas about women’s rights, racial justice and LGBT issues which were judged to have lost Labour the 1987 general election.
  • (6) Later in this piece, I’ll quote Jim again, and again he’ll sound nuts, but all I can say here is that when you spend 90 minutes next to someone, you can gauge their level of loony, and Jim was merely a low-grade crank – not unlike that certain uncle in any family who’s fun to be around but who holds strange views about, say, water fluoridation.
  • (7) If I was on my own and it was all swirling around my head, I’d have been loony.” 'There's things I said 30 years ago where I think I have must have been out of my mind' Did he ever feel out of his depth?
  • (8) In the St Ives ward of Cambridgeshire county council, Labour came sixth behind two Conservatives, two Liberal Democrats and Lord Toby Jug of the Official Monster Raving Loony party.
  • (9) In 2006, much to Ukip's fury, Cameron famously called them a party of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" (weirdly, over the weekend, the Downing Street press office seemed to retract at least the third of these suggestions, only to un-retract it).
  • (10) So where once David Cameron called Ukip a bunch of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" , now his party seeks to outbid them with weekly announcements of benefit and immigration crackdowns.
  • (11) Byelection in numbers Mike Kane , Labour, 13,261 John Bickley , Ukip, 4,301 Reverend Daniel Critchlow , Conservative, 3,479 Mary Di Mauro , Lib Dem, 1,176 Nigel Woodcock , Green party, 748 Eddy O'Sullivan , BNP, 708 Captain Chaplington-Smythe , Monster Raving Loony, 288 Turnout: 28%
  • (12) Thames river pageants have always been a mixture of the grand and the loony, and this one looks like it is going to have elements of complete lunacy.
  • (13) This election has its fair share of cranks, the obligatory Monster Raving Loonies, a guy campaigning to save local pubs (to give the full triumvirate of endangered pleasures, it's the Beer, Baccy and Crumpets party).
  • (14) I’ve experienced this with studios where they get very frightened of what you might be doing – is Michael Eisner here?” he asked, name-checking the former Disney head who Depp claims resisted his initial loony portrayal of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • (15) It is easy to mock privilege-checking, with its inferences of loony leftiness and pulsating liberal guilt.
  • (16) Because after a wobbly start, complimenting the Russian hosts as "not that bad", precisely the type of behaviour the great British public had come not to expect from Terry who compared the 2007 winner "to an angry looking Janette Krankie" and described Bosnia-Herzegovina's entry as "the four brides of Frankenstein and a loony with a clothes line", Norton found his stride.
  • (17) Chemi Shalev, Haaretz Obama posed the kinds of questions that are hardly asked aloud any more in the Israeli mainstream, swamped as it is in a steady stream of jingoistic, rightwing rhetoric, associated as it has become with people who are portrayed as loony liberals and self-hating leftists.
  • (18) Tebbit said his party was still paying the price for David Cameron's decision to brand Ukip supporters "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" eight years ago.
  • (19) Full results of the 2014 Newark byelection Robert Jenrick (C) 17,431 (45.03%, -8.82%) Roger Helmer (Ukip) 10,028 (25.91%, +22.09%) Michael Payne (Lab) 6,842 (17.68%, -4.65%) Paul Baggaley (Ind) 1,891 (4.89%) David Kirwan (Green) 1,057 (2.73%) David Watts (LD) 1,004 (2.59%, -17.41%) Nick The Flying Brick (Loony) 168 (0.43%) Andy Hayes (Ind) 117 (0.30%) David Bishop (BP Elvis) 87 (0.22%) Dick Rodgers (Stop Banks) 64 (0.17%) Lee Woods (Pat Soc) 18 (0.05%) C maj 7,403 (19.13%) 15.46% swing C to UKIP Electorate 73,486; Turnout 38,707 (52.67%, -18.69%) Newark results in the 2010 general election Con: 27,590 Lab: 11,438 Lib Dem: 10,246 Ukip: 1,954 Con majority: 16,152 Turnout: 71.4%
  • (20) Full result (with vote share and change since 2010 in brackets) George Galloway (Respect) 18,341 (55.89%, +52.83%) Imran Hussain (Labour) 8,201 (24.99%, -20.36%) Jackie Whiteley (Conservative) 2,746 (8.37%, -22.78%) Jeanette Sunderland (Liberal Democrat) 1,505 (4.59%, -7.08%) Sonja McNally (UKIP) 1,085 (3.31%, +1.31%) Dawud Islam (Green) 481 (1.47%, -0.85%) Neil Craig (Democratic Nationalists) 344 (1.05%) Howling Laud Hope (Monster Raving Loony Party) 111 (0.34%) • This article was amended on 30 March 2012.

Silly


Definition:

  • (n.) Happy; fortunate; blessed.
  • (n.) Harmless; innocent; inoffensive.
  • (n.) Weak; helpless; frail.
  • (n.) Rustic; plain; simple; humble.
  • (n.) Weak in intellect; destitute of ordinary strength of mind; foolish; witless; simple; as, a silly woman.
  • (n.) Proceeding from want of understanding or common judgment; characterized by weakness or folly; unwise; absurd; stupid; as, silly conduct; a silly question.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We just hope that … maybe she’s gone to see her friend, talk some sense into her,” Renu said, adding that Shamima “knew that it was a silly thing to do” and that she did not know why her friend had done it.
  • (2) And Myers is cautioned after a silly block 3.21am GMT 54 mins Besler with a long-throw for SKC but it's cleared.
  • (3) As if to prove her silly dilettantism, when a journalist asked Dasha about her favourite artists, she replied, "I'm, like, really bad at remembering names."
  • (4) Some of them, pulled together for the manifesto, are silly, or doomed, or simply there for shock value - information points in the form of holograms of Dixon of Dock Green, the legalisation of soft drugs, official brothels opposite Westminster, complete with division bells.
  • (5) I am of a similar vintage and, like many friends and fans of the series, bemoan the fact that we are generally treated by society as silly, weak, daft, soppy, prejudiced (even bigoted), risk-averse and wary of new situations.
  • (6) I had more fun with Matt Winning , delivering a silly set on the Free Fringe imagining himself the son of Robert Mugabe.
  • (7) Facebook Twitter Pinterest In an essay for the Hollywood Reporter, Camille Paglia writes that Swift promotes a ‘silly, regressive public image’.
  • (8) His selection on Twitter, he added, was “all in no particular order, off the top of my head, and the most incomplete of lists”, put together in response to Talese’s “silliness”.
  • (9) As soon as they saw how serious it was, they switched from being my silly, fun friends into being the most reliable and amazing people.
  • (10) They were all young, and it was a party house, devoted to games of hide and seek, music, silly practical jokes and food fights in the drawing room.
  • (11) As a result, one or two wrote some rather silly things in their reports,” Wilshaw said.
  • (12) ‘Silly things said by a silly man’ To be honest I really don’t care what BoJo says.
  • (13) People usually don't make silly, careless mistakes when they're motivated and working in a positive environment.
  • (14) Watching “our lads” pretending to mouth questionable lyrics about God giving the Queen near-immortal life, and her being the victor when she’s not really of fighting age, is silly.
  • (15) Imagine my relief this week then, when I found out that I can now let go of all my silly gay politics.
  • (16) We have referees who are unfamiliar with that silly "Goaltender Interference" technicality.
  • (17) The syndrome he described--a psychosis of early onset with a deteriorating course characterized by a "silly" affect, behavioral peculiarities, and formal thought disorder--not only adumbrated Kraepelin's generic category of dementia praecox but quite specifically defined the later subtype of hebephrenic, or disorganized, schizophrenia as well.
  • (18) "But they're so silly that I must say I never found them intimidating."
  • (19) Just as certain songs become inextricably associated in our minds with certain eras (before the invention of iPods, that is, after which everyone could walk around every day with all the songs in the world on shuffle), so too do silly trends.
  • (20) In 2014, she began working as a writer at Late Night with Seth Meyers; her first standup spot on that show began with a joke that typified both her silliness and confidence.