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facetious

/fəˈsiʃəs/
/fəˈsiʃɪs/
IPA guide

Don’t take a facetious comment seriously because it’s supposed to be funny. Anything facetious is a joke. If you've just won a hotdog-eating contest and someone asks if you'd like to go out for burgers, they’re probably being facetious.

If you forget how to spell facetious, notice that it has all five vowels in a row. The word facetious comes from the French facétie, “joke,” and it has come to describe a joke with a little drop of sarcasm. It used to simply mean “funny and witty,” but now it often implies that someone is being inappropriately funny about a serious topic.

Definitions of facetious
  1. adjective
    cleverly amusing in tone
    facetious remarks”
    comedic, humorous, humourous
    full of or characterized by humor
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DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘facetious'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors. Send us feedback
Commonly confused words

facetious / factious / fatuous

The word facetious describes something you don't take seriously. Remove the middle "e," and factious describes a dissenting group. And finally there's fatuous, which is a fancy way to say dumb.

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