fatuous

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 8, 2024 is: fatuous \FATCH-oo-us\ adjective

To describe something, such as an idea or remark, as fatuous is to say that it is foolish or silly rather than sensible or logical.

// Our hopes for an apology and a reasonable explanation for the error were met with fatuous platitudes.

[See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fatuous)

Examples:

"... when I was first admitted to the emergency room at Swedish's hospital in Edmonds, a doctor asked me whether I was right- or left-handed, and when I said left, he said, 'That's lucky'—a remark I took to be verging on the fatuous. But since then I've read that a considerable portion of left-handed people ... have their verbal and cognitive facilities located in the right hemisphere of the brain, which would explain my relative ease in talking, thinking, and remembering, despite my [hemiplegia](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hemiplegia) ..." — Jonathan Raban, Father and Son: A Memoir, 2023

Did you know?

"I am two fools, I know, / For loving, and for saying so / In whining Poetry," wrote [John Donne](https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Donne), simultaneously confessing to both infatuation and fatuousness. As any love-struck fool can attest, infatuation can make buffoons of the best of us, and so it is reasonable that the words fatuous and [infatuation](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/infatuation) share the same Latin root, fatuus, meaning "foolish." Both terms have been part of English since the 17th century, though infatuation followed the earlier verb [infatuate](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/infatuate), a fatuus descendant that once meant "to make foolish" but that now usually means "to inspire with a foolish love or admiration."