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Definition
without intelligence — often implying a smugness or complacency- We could always count on her to make a fatuous remark about the day's headlines.
fatuous = unintelligent
- The blogger is not wholly fatuous.London, Jack -- Martin Eden
- Then he turned his own rather fatuous face to the company.Chesterton, Gilbert K. -- The Wisdom Of Father Brown
- As she walked about the yellowing hillsides or worked at easy tasks, her lips were curled in a perpetual fatuous smile.John Steinbeck -- The Red Pony
- We sat about that big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation.Conrad, Joseph -- Chance
- "I am, of course, a mere student," said I, with a fatuous smile, "hardly more, I might say, than an earnest inquirer."Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan -- The Lost World
- In fetters of false values and fatuous wordsNietzsche, Friedrich -- Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book For All And None
- "Of course, you will dispute the will," she remarked, fatuously, to Catherine.Henry James -- Washington Square
- I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.Erich Maria Remarque -- All Quiet on the Western Front
- This was more exciting, the inner images it evoked more definite, and the singers' expressions became fatuous and languid.E.M. Forster -- A Passage to India
- ...Illusions of reality represented in this fatuous comedy of life that never ends, nor can ever end!Luigi Pirandello -- Six Characters in Search of an Author
- A fatuous lie; at her age there are no crises left in marriage, only acceptance and extraction.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Identity
- Apart from your obscene brutality, mon general, you are a fatuous, hollow bore, a cruel joke on your people!Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy
- I don't want to be fatuous, but I think it is very possible."Henry James -- The American
- Such bereavement, witnessed at close range, makes even the most eloquent apologia for high-risk activities ring fatuous and hollow.Jon Krakauer -- Into the Wild
- Now, from the fatuous vantage of her office in exile, Annie reflected on such deeds and on the losses within her that had prompted them.Nicholas Evans -- The Horse Whisperer
- Would you ever allow a book of evolutionary psychology applied to art not to be entirely fatuous?Adam Gopnik -- Can Science Explain Why We Tell Stories?
- "Don't you like the poor lonely bachelor?" he yammered in a fatuous way.Sinclair Lewis -- Main Street
- And in fatuous recollection a Galician peasants' saying came back to her: I am crawling into his ear.William Styron -- Sophie's Choice
- Simon said, very much hoping that she wouldn't put down the fatuousness of the question to the fact that he was stalling for time.Cassandra Clare -- City of Fallen Angels
fatuous = without intelligence
(Editor's note: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means state or degree of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.)