a. [f. L. fatu-us foolish, silly, insipid + -OUS.]
1. Of persons, their actions, feelings, utterances, etc.: Foolish, vacantly silly, stupid, besotted.
1633. W. Struther, True Happines, 20, marg. Mathematicians are fatuous.
1652. Gaule, Πῦς-μαντία, the Mag-astro-mancer, 162. What fatuous thing is Fate, then, that is so obvious and triviall, as for the Faticanes to foretell?
1665. Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica, xiii. 73. We pity, or laugh at those fatuous Extravagants.
1844. Lever, T. Burke, ix. A fatuous, stupid indifference to everything.
1864. H. Ainsworth, John Law, I. iv. The veteran courtier, fatuous as he was, was not duped by professions of regard.
1877. Morley, Crit. Misc., Ser. II. 277. The fatuous commonplaces of a philosophic optimism.
1878. Bosw. Smith, Carthage, 33. The Roman Senate, in their fatuous disregard for intellect, gave over with careless profusion to their friends, the Berber chiefs, the contents of all the libraries they had found in Carthage.
2. That is in a state of dementia or imbecility; idiotic. Now rare exc. in Sc. Law.
1773. Erskine, Inst. Law Scot., I. vii. § 48. 139. Fatuous persons, called also idiots … who are entirely deprived of the faculty of reason and have an uniform stupidity and inattention in their manner and childishness in their speech.
1842. M’Glashan, Sheriff Courts Process, § 441. When a fatuous or furious person has been cognosced.
1868. Act 31–2 Vict., c. 100 § 101. Such person shall be deemed insane if he be furious or fatuous.
3. Fatuous fire: = IGNIS FATUUS. So fatuous light, vapour, etc.
1661. A. Brome, Epist., A New-years-gift.
| And may the Sun, that now begins t’appear | |
| I’th Horizon to usher in the year, | |
| Melt all those fatuous Vapours, whose false light | |
| Purblinds the World, and leads them from the right. |
a. 1668. [see FATUUS].
1839. Bailey, Festus, xxxii. (1848), 354.
| The fatuous fire | |
| Of man’s weak judgement wandered. |
1857–8. Sears, Athan., iv. 31. You cannot do him a greater wrong than to darken it [his idea of heaven], or turn it into a fatuous light that shall lead him astray.
† 4. In Lat. sense. Tasteless, insipid, vapid.
1608. D. T., Ess. Pol. & Mor., 8 b. Truth and Knowledge … where-with whatsoever is not seasoned, is fatuous and unsavourie.
1624. Donne, Devotions, 25. Instantly the tast is insipid and fatuous.
Hence Fatuously adv., in a fatuous manner; Fatuousness, the quality or fact of being fatuous; imbecility, stupidity.
1876. J. Weiss, Wit, Hum. & Shaks., v. 154. Shakspeare was here deepening pathos upon the fair maid [Ophelia] who must be the tenant of this grave so fatuously dug.
1882. Miss Braddon, Mnt. Royal, i. Such wild youths, she told herself, fatuously, generally make the best men.
1874. Morley, Compromise (1886), 27. In both orders alike there is only too much of this kind of fatuousness, this readiness to believe that for once in our favour the stream shall flow up hill, that we may live in miasmatic air unpoisoned, that a government may depress the energy, the self-reliance, the public spirit of its citizens, and yet be able to count on these qualities whenever the government itself may have broken down, and left the country to make the best of such resources as are left after so severe and prolonged a drain.
1884. Westmorland Gaz., 1 Nov., 5/1. The … fatuousness of the policy … pursued in South Africa.
