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Analogous words: elemental, *elementary: *single, soleAntonyms: compound: complex2 *easy, facile, light, effortless, smoothAnalogous words: clear, plain, distinct, obvious, *evident, manifest: *clear, lucid, perspicuousAntonyms: complicated: difficult3 *plain, homely, unpretentiousAnalogous words: ordinary, *common, familiar: lowly, *humble: insignificant, unimportant (see affirmative nouns at IMPORTANCE)4 *natural, ingenuous, naive, unsophisticated, artless5 Simple, foolish, silly, fatuous, asinine can all mean actually or apparently deficient in intelligence.Simple, when it implies actual deficiency in intelligence, is applied chiefly to persons whose intelligence is that of a child and who are incapable of dealing with ideas or situations that involve much mental effort. It may imply either illiteracy coupled with a lack of native shrewdness, or feeblemindedness that does not amount to imbecility{
this poor, simple boy. Half-witted, they call him; and surely fit for nothing but to be happy— Hawthorne
}When used as a term of criticism of normal persons or their acts it suggests little more than failure to use one's intelligence{Marcia was a simple woman and easily deceived— Graves
}{he knew they thought him simple .... Not simple, perhaps, but strange and imperceptive— Cloete
}Foolish (see also FOOLISH 2) as a term of criticism of normal persons and their acts is stronger than simple because it imputes either the appearance of idiocy or imbecility or a want of intelligence or of good judgment that makes one blind to dangers or consequences{he looks and acts foolish when he drinks too much
}{oh, foolish youth! Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee— Shak.
}{in his younger days he had been very foolish. He had flirted and giggled— Woolf
}{feeling herself a rather foolish figure, with her stockings rolled around her ankles and her brassiere loose— Mary McCarthy
}Silly is applied to persons who, though not mentally deficient in a technical sense, fail to act as rationally guided beings either by showing a lack of common sense or ordinary good judgment or by behaving in a manner that makes them ridiculous in the eyes of others{she wasn't a weak and silly creature, with running faucets in her eyes. She didn't swoon and give way to feelings and emotions— Farrell
}{although we maintained a blackout at night, we felt silly about it— Liebling
}Fatuous does not often imply a pathological lack of intelligence, but it does imply an appearance of this and regularly suggests a combination of foolishness, stupidity, and inanity. It is a term of contempt rather than of impersonal description, and is capable of additional connotations (as fatheadedness, vacuousness, obtuseness, or loss of a sense of proportion){do you doubt that the most fatuous of the Georges, whichever it was, thought himself Newton's superior?— Landor
}{Prescott . . . was no fatuous optimist— Brooks
}{a fatuous and at the same time arrogant epistle, abounding in nonsense and lies and subterfuge— Shirer
}{she still indulged in those fatuous remarks that had no point. Remarks like: Marriage is an institution made chiefly for men and women— Abse
}Asinine is also a term of contempt; it suggests an intelligence comparable to that of a donkey, considered the stubbornest and most stupid of the beasts of burden. As applied to persons or their acts, choices, or opinions it connotes an utter failure to exercise intelligence or thinking unworthy of a rational being{an asinine choice of profession
}{an asinine use of his leisure time
}{what is one to think of a man so asinine that he looks for gratitude in this world?— Mencken
}{the most asinine and inept movie that has come out of Hollywood in years— McCarten
}Analogous words: childish, *childlike: dull, dense, dumb, slow, *stupid, crass: *ignorant, illiterate, untaughtAntonyms: wisesimple n *drug, medicinal, pharmaceutical, biologic
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
