Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Not interesting; dull.
  • adjective Lacking maturity; childish.
  • adjective Lacking in nutrition.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Scantily supplied or furnished; attenuated; poor.
  • Barren; unfurnished; wanting pith or interest, as a literary production; devoid of sense or knowledge, as a person; dry; uninteresting; shallow.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Lacking matter; empty; void of substance.
  • adjective Void of interest; barren; meager; dry.
  • adjective Juvenile; childish; immature.
  • adjective Lacking nutritional value.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Not nutritious.
  • adjective Lacking matter; empty; devoid of substance.
  • adjective Naive; simplistic.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective lacking in nutritive value
  • adjective displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity
  • adjective lacking interest or significance or impact

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin iēiūnus, meager, dry, fasting.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin iēiūnus.

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Examples

  • Quigley explained why he loves the word "jejune'' - "it just looks like a wrong word; it's crazy, I would never use it in conversation'' - and talks about personalities we both admire, such as Rex Parker, the self-proclaimed "king of CrossWorld'', Elizabeth Gorski, and the men he calls the "Three Jesuses'' of crosswords: Patrick Berry, Mike Shenk and Frank Longo.

    Boston.com Top Stories 2011

  • Will someone please call the jejune nutjobs in Seattle and tell them to GROW THE FUCK UP?

    Queerty 2008

  • Further, although I disagree with your characterization of Alyosha's religious faith as "jejune," couldn't the same description apply with equal force to Ivan's atheism?

    Balkinization 2007

  • Arguably, Alyosha's religion * is* "jejune" at that point; he has not yet undergone his crisis after the death of Father Zossima.

    Balkinization 2007

  • Yet ironically, two television programs aimed at young people and animated by a kind of jejune foolery -- Jon Stewart's Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report -- sell a great many books, more perhaps than more traditional "adult venues," and far more than newspaper reviews.

    Benjamin R. Barber: Doing Colbert (and Being Done by Him!) 2008

  • And Hazlitt's judgment on him, that he is "jejune" and

    A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889

  • Sweet jeebus, when god created the word, "jejune," he was thinking of dear Meghan. by: you @ soon

    Pam's House Blend - Front Page Autumn Sandeen 2009

  • If a new movie you have been looking forward to has been described as jejune by reputable sources what would be your best course of action? a.) wait until it comes out in June

    infoplease - Daily Almanac 2008

  • So rather than dwell on the neat category "fraud," maybe we should be thinking in terms of jejune Chinese executives colliding with the nuanced expectations of Western stock investors.

    Is Every Chinese Firm a Scam? Jr. Holman W. Jenkins 2011

  • The Louisiana governor, alternately smug and jejune, articulated precisely the ideology — those G.O.P. “policies” in the Times/CBS poll — that Americans reject: the conviction that government is useless and has no role in an emergency.

    Sunday Reading 2009

Comments

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  • ... Petulance (and its child by Desuetude, Disgust) up against the moronic Starry-Eyed, jejune Rabble-Rouse spitting at the feet of Big Dictum ...

    John Latta, Isola di Rifiuti

    This is a good example of the amazingly worded wilderness through which Mr. Latta cuts his path ... I think of the jungles of Henri Rousseau ...

    December 19, 2006

  • I can't stomach this word. There's something grossly dinner-party about it. I can't bear hearing it. It sounds like an unusually vomitous dessert.

    November 29, 2007

  • Bew pays close attention to the preoccupation of many Victorian intellectuals with Ireland, and deals with the ideas of Mill and others without falling into the jejeune generalisations of post-colonial critique. Foster

    December 13, 2007

  • As of 5.13pm today I have accepted that I will never remember the meaning of this word. I look it up, it's ho-hum, the word kind of sounds okay, bang, it's gone in thirty seconds. Again and again I've done this. As much as my singing is witheringly tuneless, my life is jejuneless.

    April 9, 2008

  • I might list jejune if I knew what it meant.

    April 9, 2008

  • I suffer from the same problem, pbilby. I think my brain is stuffed so full of esoteric words that whenever I try to relearn "jejune", the definition utterly fails to stick in my mind.

    Is there a word for this phenomenon?

    April 9, 2008

  • The latter two weirdnet definitions could also be seen as a comment.

    April 9, 2008

  • It's almost time to look up jejune again.

    April 9, 2008

  • Aw, man, my comment disappeared. Isn't there some similarity between this term and the French word for spring, or something? That's the only way I remember that it can mean a young, naive person. The problem I have with this word is always thinking it's spelled wrong; I always want to spell it jejeune.

    April 9, 2008

  • The meaning of Jejune, a young and naive person, is now obsolete. The current meaning is Vapid ( lacking juices)

    April 9, 2008

  • Yeah, they seem much the same thing to me.

    April 9, 2008

  • What does jejune mean, bilby?

    April 9, 2008

  • something that is jejune is dull, uninteresting, unsatisfying, devoid of nourishment, substance, and significance. A Jejune speech will definitely leave you BLASE

    April 9, 2008

  • Wajo, I think Prolagus is joking with bilby. :-)

    Bilby, did you ever figure out what jejune means? I can never remember.

    April 9, 2008

  • I dislike feeling BLASE. It's not a hate so much as... well, I'm apathetic about it. Almost like... blasé. ;)

    April 9, 2008

  • Uhh...

    April 10, 2008

  • Isn't it the month before Jejulie in the French calendar?

    April 10, 2008

  • That could be it. But I don't remember for sure.

    April 10, 2008

  • this word is an expression of disapproval when you want to criticise someone for being simple and unsophisticated...in other WORDS dull and boring

    May 29, 2008

  • Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on...Will he come? The jejune jesuit.

    --Ulysses,by James Joyce pg.4 (1922 edition)

    May 30, 2008

  • i will say one thing. there are some words that are still backed with their original meaning when used by certain people. this may not be the context expected but that is exactly why it works.

    NICK CAVE

    jejune as used in a recent song "i call upon the author to explain". and he just tosses that stuff off like its nothing. like "malanderer". all intellectuals be damned. he rules the english language.

    March 16, 2009

  • I always think about the jejunum when jejune comes up. It's the part of the small intestine sandwiched between the duodenum and ileum. It's probably the least interesting part of the gastrointestinal tract, as nothing really significant happens - which is how I would use the word, to mean uninteresting and insignificant.

    June 24, 2009

  • How did a bit of Korea get in my gastrointestinal tract?

    June 24, 2009

  • gonna have to stop chewing on the maps, yaar

    June 24, 2009

  • April, cruel as ever, left us sick and out of tune,

    grown too old together, we sat among our runes,

    and listless May came afterward, followed by jejune

    --jorge999

    November 5, 2009

  • This word is ill-suited.

    April 30, 2011

  • Jejune- a very funny word

    December 2, 2016