inanity means the property of being inane, of lacking material of interest or satisfaction, emptiness. It carries an Arena rating of 1656, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, inanity ranks #13 of 14,414 for Most Elegant Words, #609 of 14,423 for Most Sublime Words, #1,403 of 14,448 for Most Incisive Words, #3,541 of 14,308 for Most Malleable Words.
inanity is pronounced /ɪˈnænɪti/.
Why “inanity” is a great word
The quality of being devoid of sense, substance, or intelligence; emptiness and vacuous foolishness. From French *inanité*, from Latin *inānitās* ("emptiness, vanity"), from *inānis* ("empty, vain") + the noun-forming suffix *-itās* ("-ity"). Unlike "banality," which denotes the merely commonplace and unoriginal, or "absurdity," which confronts reason with a provocative contradiction, inanity implies a more fundamental and hollow absence. It is the static from a dead channel mistaken for conversation, the earnest repetition of a slogan whose meaning has evaporated, the corporate memo that uses a thousand words to say precisely nothing—the weary recognition that the universe is not always hostile to meaning, but often merely, devastatingly, empty of it.
Etymology
From French inanité, from Latin inānitās (“emptiness”), equivalent to inane + -ity.
noun
- The property of being inane, of lacking material of interest or satisfaction, emptiness.e.g.“All those who criticise the inanity of the effort required by the stemmatic approach without clearly adopting a position of their own, do not, in my view, touch upon the core of the problem […]”
- Something that is inane.e.g.“Working in any bureaucracy means being bedeviled by inanities daily.”
Words closest in meaning
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