inane
/ɪˈneɪn
/adjective
Lacking sense or meaning; silly: don’t badger people with inane questions...
- He kept coming out with moronic and inane comments.
- How foolish and childish and inane to think, and pray and hope, that all would justly right itself.
- It is Charles's job to appear in front of the cameras, grin and bear it and answer sometimes unbearably inane questions with whatever panache he can muster.
Synonyms
silly, foolish, stupid, fatuous, idiotic, absurd, ridiculous, ludicrous, laughable, risible, imbecilic, moronic, cretinous, unintelligent, witless, asinine, pointless, senseless, frivolous, nonsensical, brainless, mindless, thoughtless, vacuous, vapid, empty-headed;
childish, puerile, infantile, jejune
informal daft, dumb, dim, half-baked, gormless, damfool
British informal divvy
Scottish & Northern English informal glaikit
North American informal dumb-ass
South African informal dof
Derivatives
inanely
/ adverb ...- For some reason, this suddenly struck me as extremely funny, and I nearly burst out giggling inanely right there.
- I know what some of you are thinking: ‘Oh, he's far too serious, and all he does is waffle on inanely, without providing any decent links to interesting sites around the net.’
- Often I just nod inanely and mutter’ fine’ even when I am less than impressed.
inaneness
- Technique is a helpful ally, but if you lean a little too heavily on computer graphics and other catch gizmos, they blind a viewer with inaneness.
- I would question you further, to demonstrate the inaneness of your comment, but I deem it unworthy of my time.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Latin inanis 'empty, vain'.
This is from Latin inanis ‘empty, vain’. The sense ‘silly, senseless’ dates from the beginning of the 19th century.