{"id":2438,"date":"2011-12-14T14:04:13","date_gmt":"2011-12-14T19:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/?p=2438"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:49:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:49:07","slug":"facetiously-fatuous-or-fatuously-facetious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/facetiously-fatuous-or-fatuously-facetious\/","title":{"rendered":"Facetiously Fatuous or Fatuously Facetious?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dot\"The English language has a lot of words for being less than serious.<\/p>\n

Some of those words describe smart, sarcastic people (Dorothy Parker had a mordant<\/i> wit), and some describe silly, foolish people (I find most of the humor in Everybody Loves Raymond<\/i> to be unbearably fatuous<\/i>).<\/p>\n

Jocular<\/a>, jocose<\/a>, and jocund<\/a> are three very similar-sounding synonyms that just mean “joking around.”<\/p>\n

Waggish<\/a> means “roguish in merriment and good humor; jocular.”<\/p>\n

Facetious<\/a> means “not meant to be taken seriously or literally.”<\/p>\n

When I said that that burned grilled cheese you made me was the most sophisticated meal I’d ever eaten, I was being facetious<\/strong>. I mean, Kraft singles?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Fatuous<\/a> means “foolish or inane, especially in an unconscious, complacent manner; silly.”<\/p>\n

Mordant<\/a> means “sharply caustic or sarcastic, as wit or a speaker; biting.”<\/p>\n

Let’s share a bit of Dorothy Parker’s caustic wit, shall we? Some choice quotes:<\/p>\n

“He and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.”<\/p>\n

“His ignorance was an Empire State Building of ignorance. You had to admire it for its size.”<\/p>\n

“I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia.”<\/p>\n

Young man to Dorothy Parker: “I can’t bear fools.”
\nDorothy Parker to young man: “Funny, your mother could.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The English language has a lot of words for being less than serious. Some of those words describe smart, sarcastic people (Dorothy Parker had a mordant wit), and some describe silly, foolish people (I find most of the humor in Everybody Loves Raymond to be unbearably fatuous). Jocular, jocose, and jocund are three very similar-sounding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,13],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gre-strategies","category-verbal","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7199,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions\/7199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}