silly

   In modern use ‘silly’ normally means foolish, lacking in common sense. In earlier times it meant deserving of pity, or defenceless. Shakespeare’s reference to silly women in Two Gentlemen of Verona is to be interpreted in the latter sense.

   ‘Silly’ could also mean physically or mentally weak until the nineteenth century, but it is now a mild word to apply to a person. ‘It’s you I want to marry,’ says a man to a woman, in Somerset Maugham’s short story Episode. ‘Well, what’s to prevent you, silly?’ she replies. In The Dream of Fair Women, by Henry Williamson, a wife in her twenties calls her older husband ‘you silly’ with genuine affection. Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh, has a woman saying to a man: ‘No one wants to keep you from your wife, you old silly.’

   ‘Silly’ is probably used more often elsewhere in the vocative group than as a head-word. ‘Silly boy’, ‘silly girl’, ‘silly nut’, ‘you silly bugger’, ‘silly ass’, and the like occur fairly frequently and are usually friendly or intimate rather than insulting.