Crossword clues for fatuous
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Fatuous \Fat"u*ous\, a. [L. fatuus.]
Feeble in mind; weak; silly; stupid; foolish; fatuitous.
--Glanvill.-
Without reality; illusory, like the ignis fatuus.
Thence fatuous fires and meteors take their birth.
--Danham.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"foolish, stupid," 1530s, from Latin fatuus "foolish, insipid, silly;" which is of uncertain origin. Buck suggests originally "stricken" in the head. But de Vaan says from Proto-Italic *fatowo- "of speech," from the PIE root of fame (n.).\n\n[I]f we connect the fact that Fatuus is said to be an alternative name for Faunus, and that he predicted the future, and that this god is attested on an Etruscan mirror as Fatuvs in a clear oracular function (Weiss 2007b), we may venture a derivation from forfor 'to say' (Untermann 2000). The name of the god would then have come to be used pejoratively as 'silly'.
[de Vaan]
\nRelated: Fatuously; fatuousness.Wiktionary
a. Obnoxiously stupid, vacantly silly, content in one's foolishness.
WordNet
Usage examples of "fatuous".
One cannot make the best of such impossibilities, and the question is doubly fatuous until we are told which of our two lives--the conscious or the unconscious--is held by the asker to be the truer life.
They turned to face him as he neared, Van Deef displaying a fatuous grin above a wet erection.
This will sound fatuous, but, Cathy, it does not mean that I love you less.
They were mainly flawed in this respect: they too often wasted their gifts in fanatic observance of their religious beliefs, which were flagrantly fatuous.
Matching wits with a fatuous fribble of uncertain temperament could only hurt Harriet.
Boastful of his own iniquity, swaggering in his wickedness, fatuous with self-love, he recounted his deeds with gusto and with particularity.
Bram turned and saw Smeth standing there with a fatuous smile on his face.
As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of his last glove, the crowning instance of his fatuous and tardily mourned egoism came vividly back to him.
It was hard to believe that clever Yves could be responsible for anything so fatuous.
The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the tyranny of Guzman Bento seemed to bring his desire to the very door of opportunity.
Lying there in the late spring sun, Rose indulged himself in his one fatuous addiction: the reading of sensationalist newspapers and magazines.
In obedience to the dictates of the blindest prejudices and the most fatuous loyalties they did their utmost to kill men against whom they had no conceivable grievance, and they were in their turn butchered gallantly, fighting to the last.
Then the anonymous, fatuous clump of noblewomen and servants led her through the thin dawn light to Kenilworth Chapel, where Griffith waited with the priest on one hand and King Henry on the other.
Many find it fatuous and downright repugnant to claim that the wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics.
He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror.