What's the difference between silly and slight?

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.

Slight


Definition:

  • (n.) Sleight.
  • (v. t.) To overthrow; to demolish.
  • (v. t.) To make even or level.
  • (v. t.) To throw heedlessly.
  • (superl.) Not decidedly marked; not forcible; inconsiderable; unimportant; insignificant; not severe; weak; gentle; -- applied in a great variety of circumstances; as, a slight (i. e., feeble) effort; a slight (i. e., perishable) structure; a slight (i. e., not deep) impression; a slight (i. e., not convincing) argument; a slight (i. e., not thorough) examination; slight (i. e., not severe) pain, and the like.
  • (superl.) Not stout or heavy; slender.
  • (superl.) Foolish; silly; weak in intellect.
  • (v. t.) To disregard, as of little value and unworthy of notice; to make light of; as, to slight the divine commands.
  • (n.) The act of slighting; the manifestation of a moderate degree of contempt, as by neglect or oversight; neglect; indignity.
  • (adv.) Slightly.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A slight varus angle of 2.1 degrees became apparent.
  • (2) At the moment we are, if anything, slightly lagging."
  • (3) In schizophrenic patients the density of dopamine uptake sites in the basal ganglia was slightly reduced, mainly in the middle third of putamen.
  • (4) In the presence of insulin, a qualitatively similar pattern of increasing responses to albumin is observed; the enhancement of each response by insulin is, however, only slightly potentiated by higher albumin concentrations.
  • (5) Type 1 changes (decreased signal intensity on T1-weighted spin-echo images and increased signal intensity on T2-weighted images) were identified in 20 patients (4%) and type 2 (increased signal intensity on T1-weighted images and isointense or slightly increased signal intensity on T2-weighted images) in 77 patients (16%).
  • (6) At the highest dose of chloroquine tested (500 microM), a slightly greater increase in insulin binding and a decrease in insulin degradation were observed in fetal cells as compared with adult cells.
  • (7) Epidermal growth factor reduced plating efficiency by about 50% for A431 cells in different cell cycle phases whereas a slight increase in plating efficiency was seen for SiHa cells.
  • (8) )-induced gnawing behavior in rats was slightly more potent than that of clocapramine.
  • (9) Regression curves indicate that although all three types of pulmonary edema can be characterized by slightly different slopes, the differences are statistically insignificant.
  • (10) TR was classified as follows: severe (massive systolic opacification and persistence of the microbubbles in the IVC for at least 20 seconds); moderate (moderate systolic opacification lasting less than 20 seconds); mild (slight systolic opacification lasting less than 10 seconds); insignificant TR (sporadic appearance of the contrast medium into the IVC).
  • (11) When the Tunnel closed, Hardee decamped in 1991 to Up The Creek - a slightly better behaved venue in nearby Greenwich, which Hardee described as "the Tunnel with A-levels".
  • (12) Gross brain atrophy was slight and equal in both groups.
  • (13) Men who ever farmed were at slightly elevated risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (odds ratio = 1.2, 95% confidence interval = 1.0-1.5) that was not linked to specific crops or particular animals.
  • (14) The binding to DNA-cellulose of heat-activated [3H]RU486-receptor complexes was slightly decreased (37%) when compared with that of the agonist [3H]R5020-receptor complexes (47%).
  • (15) The scleral arc length is slightly longer than the chord length (caliper setting).
  • (16) Hyperosmolar buffer slightly increased the sensitivity and maximal response to methacholine as well as the cholinergic twitch to electric field stimulation.
  • (17) Though three of these presumable metabolites could slightly inhibit the binding of [3H]-KW-3049, they were not detected in rat and dog plasma at 0.5 h after oral administration of KW-3049.
  • (18) Lambing rates approach 1.5 lambs per ewe per year, but a death rate of 23 per cent and an offtake of 27 per cent, means that flock numbers are probably slightly declining.
  • (19) Subjects who trained an additional 52 wk showed a slight drop in SV at submaximal work loads from the initial increase following the first 9 wk.
  • (20) Steroid-treated steers showed a slight decline in synthesis which was significant (P less than 0.05) at week +5 post-implant while amino acid oxidation was significantly lower at weeks +2 (P less than 0.01) and +5 (P less than 0.05) compared with control animals.