''facetious'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''facetious'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260615002359-00-⌔

facetious - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

facetious (comparative more facetious, superlative most facetious)

• Treating serious issues with (often deliberately) inappropriate humour; flippant.
  • ✤ Robbie’s joke about Heather’s appearance was just him being facetious.
  • ✤ Troutbeck is a tiny village midway between Penrith and Keswick in a very sparsely populated part of Cumberland, and it used to be said by facetious travellers that the reason why it ever had a station at all was to give the engine a rest after it had struggled up the long and trying incline from Threlkeld.¹
  • ✤ Glamour for its own sake is not something I have ever been particularly interested in,” Stella McCartney said backstage after her catwalk show. Which could sound like a facetious statement from a fashion designer who was, at that moment, standing among the marble-slabbed floors, elaborately frescoed ceilings and giant chandeliers of the Palais Garnier opera house, where the show was staged.²
• Pleasantly humorous; jocular.
• (Of an idea or statement) humorously silly or counterproductive for the purpose of sarcastically advocating the opposite.

Etymology

From French facétieux, from Latin facētia (“jest, wit, humor”), from facētus (“witty, jocose, facetious”).

Pronunciation

• IPA: /fəˈsiːʃəs/
• Audio (Australian): 🔊
• Audio (US): 🔊
• (weak vowel merger) IPA: /fəˈsiːʃɪs/
• Rhymes: -iːʃəs
• Hyphenation: fa‧ce‧tious

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1951 October, “Notes and News: The Harmonium at Troutbeck”, in Railway Magazine, page 709: ↩

2. 2017 October 2, Jess Cartner-Morle, “Stella McCartney lays waste to disposable fashion in Paris”, in the Guardian ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

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