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silly

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

Laughable or amusing through foolishness or a foolish appearance.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

silee

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈsɪli

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Laughable or amusing through foolishness or a foolish appearance.

  2. of numbersparticularly prices

    Absurdly large.

  3. Good; pious.

  4. Insignificant, worthless, (chiefly Scotland) especially with regard to land quality.

  5. Rustic, homely.

  6. Mentally simple, foolish, particularly

noun

  1. colloquial

    A silly person.

  2. colloquial

    A mistake.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Laughable or amusing through foolishness or a foolish appearance.

Used this way, silly is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. Keep it for friendly, informal settings.

Emotional tone
Positive
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Moderate
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Playful
Usage feel
Playful and informal

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use silly

  • “My little brother told a very silly joke that made us laugh.”

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

rather sillysilly girlsilly questionsilly womansilly boy

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • silly seasonnounCompound term

    A time usually late summer characterized by exaggerated news stories about frivolous matters for want of real news.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.