Zany
adj, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A fool or clown, especially one whose business on the stage is to imitate foolishly the actions of the principal clown. archaic
"Then write that I may follow, and so be / Thy echo, thy debtor, thy foil, thy zany."
- 2 a man who is a stupid incompetent fool wordnet
- 3 a buffoon in one of the old comedies; imitates others for ludicrous effect wordnet
- 1 To mimic foolishly. obsolete
- 1 Unusual and awkward in a funny, comical manner; outlandish; clownish.
"And I will admit now but never then that, more than once, listening to the Viennese chattering their zany German on the pavements, or taking himself to one of the struggling small theatres that were cropping up in cellars and bombed houses..."
- 2 Ludicrously or incongruously comical.
- 1 like a clown wordnet
- 2 ludicrous, foolish wordnet
Example
More examples"A good Tatoeba contributor adopts orphaned sentences so the rest of us can focus on Christopher Columbus and his zany antics."
Etymology
From Middle French zani, zanni, from Italian zanni (“a kind of masked clown character”), from Zanni, a Venetan form of Giovanni. Doublet of Zanni, John, and Giovanni.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.