
In the 1993 film Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone plays a policeman named John Spartan who was frozen and reanimated years later to fight crime in a futuristic society. The most common misspellings are facicious, facecious, and facitious. No wonder, then, that there are numerous misspelled search queries for facetious. The correct pronunciation is fuh-see-shuss. This word isn’t exactly pronounced as it’s spelled, especially if you think of “face” or “facet” as you say it. You might run into some other forms on the web, but they are assuredly misspellings. Now that you know the meaning of facetious, how do you spell it? If you have read this far, you know that it’s F-A-C-E-T-I-O-U-S. He wants his players to experience sauna-like conditions to prepare for what awaits next month in College Station, Texas, during their season opener against Texas A&M. However, the newspaper explained why he found such high temperatures “awesome”:

Because weather that hot is usually perceived as undesirable, some readers might have thought he was kidding. The Los Angeles Times reported that the coach clapped his hands and said, “Really? Awesome!” when he learned that the temperature would be over 100 degrees in a particular week. The newsletter Mainely Media reported on the local reception of a job posting that described managerial job duties this way: “Work involves walking, talking, hearing, using hands to handle, feel or operate objects, tools, computer, cell phone or controls and reaching with hands and arms.” In response, one resident of the area asked, “Is this meant be to be facetious, or what? That all just sounds a little strange.”Ĭoach Jim Mora, like author Steve Pressfield, made a statement that sounded intentionally facetious. Here are some more down-to-earth examples of facetious in use: Outside of literature, will you find examples of facetious? Yes, the word often appears in casual writing and news articles. It was a mean, small name, with a kind of facetious twist, she thought, about its end like the upward curve of a pug dog’s tail. In The Enchanted April, one of Elizabeth von Arnim’s characters compares her name to a particular part of a funny-looking little dog: I’m not being facetious when I stress, throughout this book, that it is better to be primitive than to be sophisticated, and better to be stupid than to be smart. Many readers might assume he is joking if not for this clarification: In his book, Steve Pressfield claims that primitivity and stupidity are preferable to sophistication and intellect. If that is not the intent, the speaker must clarify his or her motive. People sometimes make comments that only seem facetious. In the Dickens quote above, it means frivolous. Boxer, a dog, is running and barking, but his frantic activity doesn’t accomplish any real purpose.īoxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy now, describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable-door now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops.įacetiously is the adverb form of facetious. The first quote is from Charles Dickens’s The Cricket on the Hearth. You’ll understand facetious better if you look at some examples of how it appears in literature. Witty is an adjective that means amusingly clever.Frivolous means lacking any serious purpose or not essential.Kidding is jesting with or dealing jokingly with someone.Tongue-in-cheek statements are ironic statements intended to amuse or make light of a situation.(Its Greek root word means “to tear flesh like a dog.”) Here are some related ideas from : If you are looking for a synonym of facetious, sarcastic is a little harsh. In short, sarcasm is mean, but facetiousness is only annoying. Sarcasm involves cutting or sneering remarks that have mocking or contemptuous undertones. What’s the difference between facetious and sarcastic ? Neither facetious nor sarcastic comments are meant literally, but the aim of facetiousness is humor. In fact, labels terms as facetious if they are “used consciously for humorous or playful effect.” Facetious vs. Facetious people are frivolous, silly, not meant to be taken literally.

Facetious can refer to anyone or anything intended to be amusing or funny but that comes off as inappropriate or annoying. What does facetious mean? It has a Latin word meaning “jest” at its origin. Write with Grammarly Facetious definition
