What's the difference between silly and zany?

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.

Zany


Definition:

  • (n.) A merry-andrew; a buffoon.
  • (v. t.) To mimic.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There’s a plausible view , however, that these extreme positions are not so much sincere commitments as zany weather balloons, floated to see how well they play with the public, as well as to bamboozle his Republican opponents.
  • (2) There are, he said, “quite a lot of letters and they say some things that are quite zany”.
  • (3) But nobody ought really to have been surprised because this, after all, is Van Gaal; the king of zaniness and over-the-top outpourings, not to mention latent hostility towards the media.
  • (4) One of Williams’ final films will be Absolutely Anything, a zany sci-fi comedy starring the Monty Python team alongside Simon Pegg, with Williams voicing a dog.
  • (5) They are a strange team right now, an end-of-era affair, with a zany, depleted defence and genuine craft and edge elsewhere.
  • (6) His zany guitar bodies are created using computer-aided design (CAD) software , output in one piece on an EOS 3D printer.
  • (7) The tone of the game is quite different to previous installments in that a good deal of the zany humour has been drained completely.
  • (8) On a ITV sofa show this week Corbyn was lured into discussing what he calls his “zany” interest in drains.
  • (9) The Qatari Armed Forces Investment Portfolio's representative, General Zani al Kuwari, who is also assistant chief of staff for financial affairs, said: "Our objective is to invest in the most important cities, and Barcelona is one of them.
  • (10) But Texas senator Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush , usually considered a moderate among the zany Republican field, took it a step further: they urged that only Syrian Christians be allowed to come to America as refugees.
  • (11) Culture A bunch of Mayan villagers are hanging out in the jungle, improbably hunting big game with a zany Indiana Jones-style contraption that looks like a giant sideways meat tenderiser.
  • (12) For a serious discussion of a subject like this to be granted so much time on British television, where the bulk of wine talk has to be aggressively crammed around the fringes of weekend morning food shows – and even then only so long as the wine expert agrees to spend most of their time on air pulling funny faces and making endless zany ‘zoinks-a-lummy’ proclamations – is extraordinary.
  • (13) Their humour is zany, beguiling and incongruous: the cast includes a chatty moon, a talking ape and a tiny shaman called Naboo played by Fielding's brother.
  • (14) Shortly afterwards, citing Rock as a precedent, a Texas Court of Appeals admitted the hypnotically elicited testimony of an eyewitness in Zani v. State (1988), on the grounds that it would be unfair to admit the hypnotically elicited testimony of defendants, and proscribe it for victims and witnesses.
  • (15) Photograph: Niko Kitsakis I'd been looking forward to browsing the shelves for zany gadgets, but the reality was slightly disappointing.
  • (16) That zany guy who constantly spouts hilarious zingers on Twitter ?
  • (17) At a time of crisis it is not about one’s “zany” love of drains, of which more later.
  • (18) Particularly having wasted a lot of time dealing with a lot of zany, ideological gimmicks from Michael Gove and his team, it would be a good thing if the Liberal Democrats were able to run education policy on our own terms,” he said.
  • (19) This was a departure from his usual zany-bonkers output, presumably causing millions of listeners to start rifling through the medicine cabinet and cueing up the scene featuring Basil Fawlty thrashing his car with a branch for themselves.
  • (20) Instead, somehow or other, he has come into possession of a preternaturally phantasmagoric suit of armour, complete with zany high-tech accoutrements; or a hammer that can call down lightning from the heavens; or extendable fingernails; or laser eyesight; or implausible (and non-steroid-related) abs; or the ability to change shape.