witlessness


Also found in: Thesaurus, Idioms.
Related to witlessness: lawlessness

wit·less

 (wĭt′lĭs)
adj.
Lacking intelligence or wit; foolish.

wit′less·ly adv.
wit′less·ness n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Translations

witlessness

n (= stupidity)Dummheit f, → Blödheit f (inf)
Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007
Mentioned in ?
References in classic literature ?
Come, answer this, didst thou detect in me Some touch of cowardice or witlessness, That made thee undertake this enterprise?
Almost all his appointees are, like him, underwhelming, intellectually incurious rubes.' Justice Tanko is the latest instantiation of Buhari's passion for attracting and elevating people who mirror his own well-known incompetence and witlessness.
I got so utterly bored by his witlessness that I ended up asking Google whether someone's face only becomes irritating after you've decided you don't care for their politics or whether some people are born with objectively annoying faces.
However, representing "witlessness, humour, [and] persistency itself" (130)--a classed embodiment of "incorrigible hope" (131) and "a force working [to restore]; something not highly conscious" (139)--she also reflects a lot of what Woolf patronizingly lauded in Scott's characters: a tidal force of humanity that, like nature itself, cyclically creates or destroys while remaining indifferent to modern social structures.
Such witlessness has become a trademark of the anti-Duterte bloc, who also happens to be members of the so-called Yellow Cult.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution pointed to the inappropriate and completely fabricated statements US President Donald Trump has made, out of desperation, at United Nations General Assembly, to which he rebutted, "These statements do not stem from a sense of power; rather, they arose from anger, desperation, and witlessness. This is because US Government officials are extremely disappointed and angry, since their long-term plans in Western Asia have been foiled due to the efficient presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
(61) (The king is to be consulted about an insane man who is in prison because in his madness he confesses himself a thief, while really he is not guilty.) (62) (The king must be consulted about an idiot who is in prison because in his witlessness he confessed that he is a thief, although in fact he is not to blame.) (63) This early thirteenth-century example raises further questions about terminology.
But this stream of vomit and poo gags is delivered with such witlessness that they start to resemble a form of torture.
For instance, while Hale, like Coke, did not allow "induced witlessness," (that is, drunkenness) to excuse, he did carve out an exception for cases when heavy drinking caused "an habitual or fixed phrenzy." WALKER, supra note 130, at 39.
This is true, but the movie also raises, in its revelatory, postapocalyptic witlessness, specifically textual questions that remind us of the ontological struggles we saw at the beginning of this paper, when actors tried to transform the words of public, political texts into the materials of dramatic performance.
A lack of intelligence on the field was a clear problem for Newcastle during a second half when they allowed QPR to creep back into the game, and Gutierrez admits there was a witlessness about United during that second period.
But the artist, who knows what the tools are for, laughs at this witlessness, pays no regard to fatuous words, and continues to use his workshop as before.