The Fascinating Evolution of the Word Silly

Some words seem to almost insinuate their meanings just by the very way they sound. I have always felt the word silly is one such word. There is something that seems almost inherently silly about the sound “illy” in English. Perhaps I only feel this way because I have heard comic expressions containing this sound, such as “silly billy” and “willy-nilly,” too many times. In any case, the word silly has quite an unusual and fascinating history. Indeed, of all the words in the English language, the word silly is perhaps the word with the strangest, most convoluted history of meanings.

The word silly is ultimately derived from the archaic Old English word sælig or gesælig. Originally, this word meant “blessed” or “fortunate.” It is derived from the Proto-Germanic word *sēlīgaz, meaning “happy” or “blissful” and is directly cognate to the Old High German word sālig, which bore the same meaning and is the root of the Modern German word selig, which means “extremely overjoyed.”

In slightly later times, though, because it was believed that happiness and good fortune were the direct result of a person’s piety and that people who were extremely fortunate were also extremely devout, the word came to mean “pious” or “holy” Because people who were pious were usually thought of as being especially righteous, the word changed its meaning again and came to mean “noble,” “righteous,” “brave,” or “virtuous.” For instance, this is how the word is used in a text known as The Seven Sages, which dates to around 1450:

“The sylyman lay and herde,
And hys wyf answerd;
‘Dame,’ he sayed,
‘go thy way.'”

Usually when a person is noble, that person is also innocent, so the word silly took on the new meaning of “innocent.” People who are innocent, however, usually refrain from causing harm, so the word changed its meaning again and came to mean “harmless.”

If a person is harmless, though, then that person is probably weak and in need of charity, so the word silly came to mean “pitiful” or “helpless.” This is how the word is used by Richard Morison in his 1539 translation of Juan Luis Vives’s Introduction to Wysedome, in which he writes: “Wherfore Christe must soo moche the more instantelye be sought vpon, that he may vouchsafe to defende vs sylly wretches.”

Then, because people who are pathetic and helpless are rarely particularly intelligent, the word silly eventually came to mean “stupid” or “ignorant.” For instance, in Act V, Scene I of the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, which was written in around 1595 or thereabouts, the character Hippolyta utters the line, “This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.”

Similarly, Archibald Lovell writes in his 1687 translation of Jean de Thévenot’s book The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the Levant “From Hell (of which the silly people of the Country think the top of this hill to be the mouth).” Charles Dickens uses the word silly this way in his novel Barnaby Rudge, published in 1841, which includes the line: “‘Now heaven help this silly fellow,’ murdered the perplexed locksmith, ‘Can he know this gentleman?'”

Eventually, because stupid people often behave in strange or childish ways, the word silly eventually attained its present meaning of “goofy,” “odd,” “childish,” or “absurd.” For instance, this is how the word is used in the 1970 Monty Python sketch “The Ministry of Silly Walks.”

As you can see, throughout its long lifespan, the word, silly, has somehow managed to hold almost every single definition it is possible for a single word to have.