- treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant; joking or jesting often inappropriately; meant to be humorous or funny : not serious
“just being facetious”
“a facetious remark”
“Nor was Liebling seriously asserting that his facetious bit of investigation into Tin Pan Alley history constituted a refutation of Sartre’s philosophy. —Raymond Sokolov, Wayward Reporter, 1980”
“… old ladies shrivelling to nothing in a forest of flowers and giant facetious get-well cards … —John Updike, Trust Me, 1962”
“The portrait is good, the prose embroidered here with the facetious parlance—is that the word?—of clubs. —V. S. Pritchett, “Club and Country,” 1949, in A Man of Letters, 1985”
“the essay is a facetious commentary on the absurdity of war as a solution for international disputes”
“a facetious and tasteless remark about people in famine-stricken countries being spared the problem of overeating”
flippant · flip · glib · frivolous · tongue-in-cheek · ironic · sardonic · joking · jokey · jocular · playful · sportive · teasing · mischievous · witty · amusing · funny · droll · comic · comical · lighthearted · jocose, clever, humorous, smart
serious, earnest, sincere
Facetious—which puzzle fans know is one of the few English words containing the vowels a, e, i, o, u in order—came to English from the Middle French word facetieux, which traces to the Latin word facetia, meaning “jest.” Facetia seems to have made only one other lasting contribution to the English language: facetiae, meaning “witty or humorous writings or sayings.” Facetiae, which comes from the plural of facetia and is pronounced \fuh-SEE-shee-ee\ or \fuh-SEE-shee-eye\, is a far less common word than facetious, but it does show up occasionally. For example, American essayist Louis Menand used it in his 2002 book American Studies to describe the early days of The New Yorker. “The New Yorker,” he wrote, “started as a hectic book of gossip, cartoons, and facetiae.”
late 16th cent. (in the general sense ‘witty, amusing’): from French facétieux, from facétie, from Latin facetia ‘jest,’ from facetus ‘witty.’
Middle French facetieux, from facetie jest, from Latin facetia —see facetiae
First Known Use: 1594
facetious (adjective)
facetiously (adverb)
facetiousness (noun)
