Facetiously Fatuous or Fatuously Facetious?

The English language has a lot of words for being less than serious.

Some of those words describe smart, sarcastic people (Dorothy Parker had a mordant wit), and some describe silly, foolish people (I find most of the humor in Everybody Loves Raymond to be unbearably fatuous).

Jocular, jocose, and jocund are three very similar-sounding synonyms that just mean “joking around.”

Waggish means “roguish in merriment and good humor; jocular.”

Facetious means “not meant to be taken seriously or literally.”

When I said that that burned grilled cheese you made me was the most sophisticated meal I’d ever eaten, I was being facetious. I mean, Kraft singles?

Fatuous means “foolish or inane, especially in an unconscious, complacent manner; silly.”

Mordant means “sharply caustic or sarcastic, as wit or a speaker; biting.”

Let’s share a bit of Dorothy Parker’s caustic wit, shall we? Some choice quotes:

“He and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.”

“His ignorance was an Empire State Building of ignorance. You had to admire it for its size.”

“I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia.”

Young man to Dorothy Parker: “I can’t bear fools.”
Dorothy Parker to young man: “Funny, your mother could.”