Word of the Day: Fatuous
fat-u-ous / ˈfa-chü-əs
adjective
1. foolish or inanely silly
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
Samuel Butler, 1835-1902
2. unreal; illusory
Everybody who’s been on television more than once wears in public an expression of fatuous affability.
Quentin Crisp, 1908-1999
Etymology
This word, first recorded in the 1530s, comes from the Latin fatuus, meaning ‘foolish, insipid, silly’. There is some debate over the origin of the Latin word, but many suggest it comes from a Proto-Italic word, fatowo, which means ‘speech’. Interestingly, Fatuus is believed to be an alternate name for the god Faunus, who predicted the future in Roman mythology.
Thank you for including the Dictionary Project in the good work you do in your club. In my club, we have provided Dictionaries for third-grade students for enough years that now we are having former students help us to present dictionaries each year. They are often returning to the same classrooms that they were third-grade students. Teachers plead every year for us to NEVER quit this valuable project. They tell us that students NEED paper books to learn to read, to learn to do research and to do independent study. Please send me pictures of your presentations and tell me about your visits to the schools to give dictionaries to the students. To be included in our newsletter you can send me your stories at DG.2019@5630mail.org.
