Talk:silly

Etymology history?

It seems to me there ought to be a little more discussion of the tremendous amount of semantic shift this word has undergone from its OE roots.

• Old English: “blessed”
• 1400: “innocent” (Cely art thou, hooli virgyne marie.)
• 1470: “deserving of compassion” (Sely Scotland, that of helpe has gret neide.)
• 1633: “weak” (Thou onely art The mightie God, but I am a sillie worm.)
• “simple” or “ignorant”
• Today: “foolish”

132.162.218.82 20:10, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I do not know if the dates are exact but this etymology (or history) of "silly" is more useful for a reader of wiktionary and more etymologically correct. The way meanings are "expressed" (archaic 1, obsolete 2-8-9) does not give the knowledge as to when it was used with every sense. Also the usage of the word through out the centuries, indicates that the new meaning is not a direct outcome of "Phonetic variant of seely". (same problems of course arise in many other lemmas ex. nice) --Xoristzatziki (talk) 04:11, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Foolish/Silly

I am not sure that silly means foolish exactly, but something more like goofy or ridiculous in a small or cute way, or something like that, eh? What do you all think? Dudanotak (talk) 22:22, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

It can mean both (and a lot of other things). Equinox ◑ 22:26, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Russian translation not transcribed correctly?

I can't attest either way to that translation's correctness, but in

• Russian: глупышка (ru) (glúpyj)

I think the correct transcription of the Russian word would be closer to something like glúpyshka.

PauAmma (talk) 14:12, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely. I think the transliteration was copied from another translation in the same entry. It's already been fixed by another contributor. Thanks for bring it to our attention!

For future reference: the templates automatically provide a Russian transliteration, so it's generally safe to just remove the transliteration from Russian translations (there may be extremely rare cases where the automated transliteration is wrong, but I don't know of any).Chuck Entz (talk) 16:31, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

One noun sense removed

Removed the "silly people in general" plural sense (cites preserved below this message) because that's really using the adjective, like "the rich". Equinox ◑ 14:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

1. • 1560, William Baldwin, The Funeralles of King Edward the Sixt:

     Repent you Leachers your dissolute lives,
     Your causeles divorsing your true wedded wives,
     Your crafty alluring the silly to sinne.

   • 1973 August 9, New Scientist, 350/2:

     The mindless and the silly are always open to being conned into believing that some new bit of technological wizardry is beneficial.