| 释义 |
fatuous, a.|ˈfætjʊəs|
[f. L. fatu-us foolish, silly, insipid + -ous.]
1. Of persons, their actions, feelings, utterances, etc.: Foolish, vacantly silly, stupid, besotted.
1633Struther True Happines 20 Mathematicians are fatuous. 1652Gaule Magastrom. 162 What fatuous thing is Fate. 1665Glanvill Sceps. Sci. xiii. 73 We pity, or laugh at those fatuous extravagants. 1844Lever T. Burke ix, A fatuous, stupid indifference to everything. 1864H. Ainsworth John Law i. iv, The veteran courtier, fatuous as he was, was not duped by professions of regard. 1877Morley Crit. Misc. Ser. ii. 277 The fatuous commonplaces of a philosophic optimism. 1878R. B. Smith Carthage 33 Roman Senate, in their fatuous disregard for intellect.
2. That is in a state of dementia or imbecility; idiotic. Now rare exc. in Sc. Law.
1773Erskine Inst. Law Scot. i. vii. §48. 139 Fatuous persons, called also idiots..who are entirely deprived of the faculty of reason and have an uniform stupidity and inattention in their manner and childishness in their speech. 1842M'Glashan Sheriff Courts Process §441 When a fatuous or furious person has been cognosced. 1868Act 31–2 Vict. c. 100 §101 Such person shall be deemed insane if he be furious or fatuous.
3. fatuous fire: = ignis fatuus. So fatuous light, fatuous vapour, etc.
1661A. Brome Epist., New Year's Gift, Those fatuous Vapors, whose false light Purblinds the World. a1668[see fatuus]. 1839Bailey Festus xxxii. (1848) 354 The fatuous fire Of man's weak judgment. 1857–8Sears Athan. iv. 31 A fatuous light that shall lead him astray.
†4. In Lat. sense. Tasteless, insipid, vapid.
1608D. T. Ess. Pol. & Mor. 8 b, Truth and Knowledge..where-with whatsoever is not seasoned, is fatuous and unsavourie. 1624Donne Devotions 25 Instantly the tast is insipid and fatuous.
Hence ˈfatuously adv., in a fatuous manner; ˈfatuousness, the quality or fact of being fatuous; imbecility, stupidity.
1876J. Weiss Wit, Hum. & Shaks. v. 154 The fair maid [Ophelia] who must be the tenant of this grave so fatuously dug. 1882M. E. Braddon Mt. Royal i, Such wild youths, she told herself, fatuously, generally make the best men. 1874Morley Compromise (1886) 27 In both orders alike there is only too much of this kind of fatuousness. 1884Westmorland Gaz. 1 Nov. 5/1 The..fatuousness of the policy..pursued in South Africa. |