[ad. F. fatuité = Pr. fatuitat, ad. L. fatuitātem, f. fatuus foolish.]
1. Folly, silliness, stupidity. Now chiefly (? after 2) in stronger sense: Crass stupidity, ‘idiotic’ folly; mental blindness caused by ‘infatuation.’
The F. word, being associated with its etymological cognate fat fop, has usually the sense of ‘conceited folly, silly affectation; this sense, if it occurs in Eng., is only a Gallicism.
1648. Eikon Bas., v. 28. Sure it had argued a verie short sight of things, and extream fatuitie of minde in Mee, so far to binde My own hands at their request, if I had shorty meant to have used a Sword against them.
1660. Waterhouse, Arms & Arm., 53–4. They descend to the fatuity of bringing wild beasts into their Gods and Emperours places, for such at last they stained their Insignia with.
1797. Mrs. Radcliffe, Italian, xxiii. (1824), 660. While he confounded delicacy of feeling with fatuity of mind, taste with caprice, and imagination with error, he yielded, when he most congratulated himself on his sagacity, to illusions not less egregious, because they were less brilliant, than those which are incident to sentiment and feeling.
1812. H. & J. Smith, Rej. Addr., x. (1873), 93. The applause of unintellectual fatuity.
1859. Thackeray, Virgin., lxxxv. O strange fatuity of youth!
1878. Lecky, Eng. in 18th C., I. i. 10. Attacked with a strange fatuity the very Church on whose teaching the monarchical enthusiasm mainly rested.
b. Something fatuous; that which is fatuous.
1538. Bale, Thre Lawes, 1386. In vayne worshyp they teachynge mennys fatuyte.
1887. F. Hall, in The Nation (N.Y.), 17 Feb., XLIV. 141/2. In the dark days when English religionists, whether Laudian or otherwise, not only were familiar with the terminology of star-gazing, but were numerously wedded to that and kindred futilities and fatuities.
2. Idiocy, mental imbecility, dementia. Now rare.
1621–51. Burton, Anal. Mel., I. i. III. iii. 34. If the brain be hot, the animal spirits are hot; much madness follows, with violent actions; if cold, fatuity and sottishness.
a. 1676. Hale, Hist. Placit. Cor. (1736), I. iv. 29. Ideocy or fatuity à nativitate.
1707. Floyer, Physic. Pulse-Watch, 93. The Ancients imputed Fatuity to the Refrigeration of the Head, with which the Hearts consents, and produces smaller, slower, and more rare Pulses.
1748. Hartley, Observations on Man, I. iii. 391. A species of Madness; as Fatuity or Idiotism is.
1779. Johnson, Lett. Mrs. Thrale, 6 April. Death is dreadful, and fatuity is more dreadful.
1797. M. Baillie, Morb. Anat. (1807), 434. He has met with this appearance in cases of fatuity, where the persons were advanced in life, and also combined with effusions of blood in apoplexy.
1884. in Syd. Soc. Lex.
