I. adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a silly grin
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‘Wipe that silly grin off your face!’ the teacher shouted.
a silly/stupid mistake
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You need to be able to laugh at your own silly mistakes.
a stupid/silly question (= one whose answer is obvious )
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Did you win, or is that a stupid question?
be bored stiff/silly/rigid (= extremely bored )
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Patti was bored stiff with small-town Massachusetts life.
silly billy
silly little
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It was another of her silly little jokes.
silly old fool
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You silly old fool !
silly season
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
just
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Pathos rules and Seth is just silly .
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He was just silly for himself.
pretty
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I felt pretty silly wearing a plastic walnut shell on my head.
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The way I looked at it, doing three jumps into the sand was pretty silly .
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You all feel pretty silly now, don't you?
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In three years, you could feel pretty silly sitting in front of $ 2, 000 analog set.
rather
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We used to be their pet band until we had a rather silly disagreement onstage.
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Put like that, it did sound rather silly .
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He went on to say that he felt they were both being rather silly and he wanted to make amends.
so
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Why do parents not try harder to stop their children being so silly ?
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I feel so silly going through my suitcase looking for a pair of pajamas to wear to a disco.
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It had been a beastly day and Caroline had been so silly at supper.
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How can you be so silly .
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Carrie felt impatient with her - no grown-up should be so weak and so silly - but she was sorry as well.
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Dragging you all this way in this heat. So silly , really.
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She'd not act so silly again.
too
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All this talk about who fancied who was too silly , like Beatles' song lyrics, the stuff of day-dreams.
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But at the end I thought it got a little bit too silly .
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It would actually discourage expansion and seems too silly for the Government to seriously contemplate.
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So here are a few of mine, mixed in with answers to those questions you might have felt too silly to ask.
very
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Cryer, Rushton, Garden, Brook-Taylor and Lyttleton play very silly games for radio.
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He listened and then informed me that these were very silly children and that he would never feel like that.
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All agreed that it was a trick and that it was very silly of the people who made it.
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Lysistrata is a very silly play with a very bawdy storyline.
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It must have looked very silly .
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He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral.
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And your Governor wasn't looking where he was going, it was very silly of him.
■ NOUN
fool
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And what good you, you silly fool , playing into my hands like this?
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But the captain mocked him for a silly fool and bade the crew hasten to hoist the sail.
game
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Cryer, Rushton, Garden, Brook-Taylor and Lyttleton play very silly games for radio.
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That's a Victoria thing, a silly game if you ask me.
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It wasn't the time to be playing silly games .
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Spying was a silly game anyway.
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First, many critics see this as a silly game of publication counting, a bogus guide to merit in the lab.
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In 1970, the last thing he wanted was to be reminded of Richard and the silly game they used to play.
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We have returned from fighting for your well-being, mistress, and are in no mood for silly games .
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I don't care to play out my silly games before the assembled company.
games
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Cryer, Rushton, Garden, Brook-Taylor and Lyttleton play very silly games for radio.
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It wasn't the time to be playing silly games .
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We have returned from fighting for your well-being, mistress, and are in no mood for silly games .
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I don't care to play out my silly games before the assembled company.
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I want to believe you never played about with drugs or silly games .
girl
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The silly girl had managed to get the baggy satyr on her track.
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The vision of the vain, silly girl she had been seemed to accuse her in some obscure way.
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She was a silly girl , and far too easily impressed by Grunte's elephantine attentions.
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Come on, get down, you silly girl .
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Why do you panic like a silly girl every time something scares you?
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Well, I just told Ruth not to be a silly girl and got him off to Nurse.
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And she's not a silly girl , either.
hat
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Secondly, I don't own a silly hat .
idea
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But local councillors say it's a silly idea .
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There was one way to scotch this silly idea .
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Is it not about time to bring to a halt the silly idea which threatens the safety of Benefits Agency staff?
joke
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The little things, silly jokes , family news, plans and questions are significant to the whole family.
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True, it can be tiring to live through this silly joke phase, but this is the ultimate in language education.
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Terribly difficult not to make it sound like a silly joke .
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Norah Lettuce Leaf Children like these kinds of silly jokes and, for this, you make a rabbit's costume.
mistake
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What, am I to condemn the girl for one silly mistake to a lifetime of slights and abuse?
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Perhaps, you might assert, you would never make such a silly mistake .
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The company also started making silly mistakes .
name
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Diana and Carolyn would regularly while away a quiet evening ringing people with silly names who appeared in the telephone directory.
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I do not want to take your silly name any longer.
question
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Rincewind wondered if it was poisonous, then chided himself for asking such a silly question .
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Ask a silly question , Benny thought, and rolled her eyes.
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Of course it had been a silly question , but why had she been so cross?
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In section 16.4 we turn to why people demand money - not the silly question it may seem.
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Much as I feel now at your damned silly question !
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It does not seem to me that there is any need for me to answer his silly question on the subject.
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That is rather a silly question on such an important occasion.
season
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Those parliamentary gossips still in London enduring the boredom of the silly season waited in happy expectation for the scandal to break.
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The silly season is upon us.
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Then that silly season when the oil rigs blew like bottles in a crate of excited stout.
thing
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I felt other people felt the same way about silly things .
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Who had time to be inventing silly things !
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Perhaps that is a lesson that, at my age, I should stop doing such silly things .
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Landing down wind is a silly thing to do.
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She fought it for as long as she could, but it was such a silly thing .
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The silly thing is that the labels only matter to you if you do know the rules yourself.
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This was a weakness which led him to say silly things .
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It was a silly thing to say.
things
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I felt other people felt the same way about silly things .
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Who had time to be inventing silly things !
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Perhaps that is a lesson that, at my age, I should stop doing such silly things .
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This was a weakness which led him to say silly things .
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And she takes such silly things .
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I've heard since that people can do silly things then.
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There was money for silly things .
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Women did silly things all the time; that's why they were women.
woman
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She longed for the silly woman to stop prattling and to blow out the candle.
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When those silly women went to the downstairs powder room, I saw them go.
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Silly, she thought, you silly woman !
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Fru Møller was not a silly woman nor was she utterly stupid; she was, however, conventional and superficial.
word
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Silly words , silly words, silly awful hurting words.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
drink yourself silly/into a stupor/to death etc
the silly season
too silly/complicated/ridiculous etc for words
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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Do you mind if I ask a silly question?
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Don't pay any attention to her - she's just being silly .
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I had locked myself out, which was a silly thing to do.
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I have a question which might sound a bit silly .
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I think you're silly to worry so much about your hair.
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It's silly to build another room onto the house now.
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Now don't be silly , get up off the floor.
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That was silly of me -- I just locked the trunk and the keys are inside.
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We saw all these city people with their silly little sandals on.
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You're just a silly little boy.
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You've made a lot of silly mistakes in this essay.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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And, though I believe she is at heart a sensible girl, she might be driven to do something silly .
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I thought it was a damn silly place to park if some one wanted to take a leak in the bushes.
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Life was too short to worry about every silly little detail.
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One such came lolloping up to Meredith, a silly grin on its face.
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Rehearsals over, a certain degree of moodiness or silly humor would overtake him.
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Summoning the presence not to say something catty, I said something silly .
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You know the sort of thing ... Good, kind people, but extraordinarily silly .
II. noun
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
drink yourself silly/into a stupor/to death etc
good/poor/silly old etc sb
the silly season
too silly/complicated/ridiculous etc for words
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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No, silly , put it over there!