William Gifford
Did you know?
The oddballs among us are likely familiar with zany as an adjective, meaning "eccentric." But did you know the word originated as a noun—one that has withstood the test of time? Zanies have been theatrical buffoons since the heyday of the Italian commedia dell’arte, in which a "zanni" was a stock servant character, often an intelligent and proud valet with abundant common sense and a love of practical jokes. Zanni comes from a dialect nickname for Giovanni, the Italian form of John. The character quickly spread throughout European theater circles, inspiring such familiar characters as Pierrot and Harlequin, and by the late 1500s an anglicized version of the noun zany was introduced to English. The adjective appeared within decades, and eventually both adopted more general meanings to refer to or describe those of us who are quipsters and weirdos.
Synonyms
Adjective
- absurd
- asinine
- balmy
- brainless
- bubbleheaded
- cockeyed
- crackpot
- crazy
- cuckoo
- daffy
- daft
- dippy
- dotty
- fatuous
- featherheaded
- fool
- foolish
- half-baked
- half-witted
- harebrained
- inept
- insane
- jerky
- kooky
- kookie
- loony
- looney
- lunatic
- lunkheaded
- mad
- nonsensical
- nutty
- preposterous
- sappy
- screwball
- senseless
- silly
- simpleminded
- stupid
- tomfool
- unwise
- wacky
- whacky
- weak-minded
- witless
Noun
Examples of zany in a Sentence
Rocio Fabbro, Quartz, 2 Apr. 2024
But Barth’s most memorable writing remains the stuff that works on both levels: the gently rising and falling slopes of narrative and the zany mirror maze of self-reflexivity.
—Dave Kim, New York Times, 2 Apr. 2024
The Body in the Backyard, out July 16 from Bloom Books, hits close to home for our heroine and the zany cast of characters surrounding her.
—Lizz Schumer, Peoplemag, 22 Mar. 2024
And as the story hurtles toward 1970 (there’s a highly amusing space-race subplot), the powdery, gauzy town of Palm Beach becomes louder, zanier, and more outlandish—with preppy Lilly Pulitzer swapped out for psychedelic Pucci.
—Lilah Ramzi, Vogue, 20 Mar. 2024
This extends to the expressivity of a noodle’s form, sensual or zany, and to the harmony of marrying a particular shape with exactly the right sauce, which carries the same satisfying sense of inevitability that comes from hanging a picture just right.
—Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 10 Mar. 2024
Fueled by a zany and self-consciously Gen Z marketing strategy on Instagram and TikTok, the young men behind the business said their sales surpassed $6 million last year and their staff of 22 filled an average of 11,000 orders a month.
—Charles W. McFarlane, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2024
From Ripa donning a faux python romper to Consuelos rocking flip-flops, the couple poked fun at some of their zaniest style moments throughout the years.
—Bailey Richards, Peoplemag, 11 Mar. 2024
The worse things get, the more the company makes zany jokes; the 1491s started out posting videos of weird sketches online, and even now a loose, we’ll-fix-it-in-the-edit spirit pervades the piece.
—The New Yorker, 23 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'zany.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Zany.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/zany. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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