silly
part of speech
adjective (silly, sillier, silliest)
meaning for a pupil
1) Silly means funny in a foolish way: a silly hat. tree →
2) Silly means not sensible or not wise: a silly mistake. tree →
3) «Silly» can be said kindly to someone who is being foolish. tree →
4) A silly can also be a foolish person, often said kindly to someone. tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths a word of the story only, but «a silly mistake» is a careless one, like adding instead of subtracting. Everyday: silly jokes, silly faces, being silly, don't be silly. Stories: a silly goose, silly games.
examples
- The clown wore 3 silly hats. tree →
- They told silly jokes for 10 minutes. tree →
- It is silly to buy 20 umbrellas. tree →
- How many silly faces did he draw? tree →
- I made a silly mistake and forgot to carry the one. tree →
- Don't be silly, it's only a spider. tree →
- The children giggled at the silly song. tree →
- Well, that was one big silly. tree →
note
Comparative sillier, superlative silliest. Carries no number clue. Trap: none. «Silly» is gentler than «stupid»; use it kindly.
In the corpora
- Tipsy means a little alcohol has made someone chattier and sillier than usual, though they are still in control.
- Bots rhyme by sound and may not notice that a rhyme sounds rude or silly.
- A family password, a silly word that is not online anywhere, beats a fake voice.
- People argue whether the banana is a clever joke about money and art or proof that the art market is silly.
- Ukraine has a long cartoon history: a Kyiv studio made the silly Cossacks cartoons from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «silly» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.