Silliness
Goofy, lighthearted absurdity that makes you giggle.
Silliness is goofy, lighthearted absurdity that makes you giggle. The chest is light with bubbling energy and the face turns goofy. Absurdity delights rather than confuses. The playful orientation finds genuine pleasure in the wonderfully ridiculous.
Dignity is overrated. Silliness is medicine.
Silliness is the willingness to be absurd in front of someone who has not earned the right to laugh at you. It is therefore a small act of trust. Silly with your child. Silly with your partner. Silly with the friend who has known you for twenty years. The silliness is not the point. The willingness to drop the performance is the point. We spend most of our public lives managing impressions. The people who let you be silly with them are the people you can actually rest around. If there is no one in your life with whom you can be silly, that is information. Find one. Or be silly first and see who joins you.
"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
— Henry David Thoreau
Silliness has a distinctive body signature of light goofy playful engagement. The chest is light with bubbling silly energy. The breath becomes lighter and may include laughter. The face shows particular goofy quality, often with sustained smile and animated expression. The voice often takes on particular silly quality including funny voices, silly sounds, or particular tone. The body holds itself in a way that suggests goofy engagement: posture may become bouncy or exaggerated, gestures expansive and silly, attention engaged with the absurd dimension. The state is typically brief but can be recurrent in particular contexts including with particular people, in particular family or friend dynamics, or during particular activities.
Silliness has been studied less directly as discrete emotion and more within research on play, humour, and what positive psychology has examined as light positive states. Research has shown that capacity for silliness and play contributes to wellbeing, relationships, and various life outcomes. The capacity for silliness appears widely shared though substantial individual variation exists in how readily it develops and how comfortable adults are with allowing themselves to be silly.
Silliness arises through specific conditions involving playful absurd engagement. Common patterns include:
Silliness is one of the more delightful sustaining positive states. The following help.
Allow silliness when contexts welcome it
Some adults resist silliness through patterns including taking themselves too seriously, particular self-concepts that exclude silly engagement, or sustained patterns that block lighter positive states. Allowing silliness when contexts welcome it supports both the experience and broader engagement with life. The resistance often costs more than the silliness would cost.
Build relationships and contexts that welcome it
Silliness is often supported by relationships and contexts that welcome it. Building such relationships and contexts, including with people who can engage in silly play and contexts that allow for it, supports more frequent silliness than relying on spontaneous occurrence in unsupportive contexts.
Engage with children when possible
Engagement with children when possible often supports access to silliness through the children's invitation to silly play. The engagement is mutually beneficial; the silliness supports the engagement and the engagement supports the silliness.
Recognise context appropriateness
Silliness is welcome in some contexts and less appropriate in others. Recognising contexts where silliness fits versus where it may not supports better social functioning while still allowing the state when appropriate. The recognition is part of mature engagement with positive states.
If silliness has become mask for difficulty
Some sustained silliness serves as mask for difficulty including unresolved emotional issues, particular relationship difficulties, or other concerns that warrant direct engagement. Distinguishing silliness as genuine positive state from silliness as avoidance supports better engagement; addressing what may be underlying avoidance produces better outcomes than continued silliness that prevents engagement.
"Research on play and humour has shown that capacity for silliness and play contributes to wellbeing, relationships, and various life outcomes."
— A theme in research on play
What is silliness?
Silliness is goofy, lighthearted absurdity that makes you giggle. The body has been engaged with playful absurd quality that produces silly response, with quality of operating with goofy lightness rather than with serious engagement. The chest is light with bubbling silly energy. The face shows particular goofy quality. There is a quality of being delighted by absurdity, of being moved to silly response by what is wonderfully ridiculous, of operating from playful orientation that finds genuine pleasure in the silly. Silliness specifically refers to goofy lighthearted absurdity.
Where do people feel silliness in the body?
Silliness has a distinctive signature of light goofy playful engagement. The chest is light with bubbling silly energy. The breath becomes lighter and may include laughter. The face shows particular goofy quality, often with sustained smile and animated expression. The voice often takes on particular silly quality including funny voices, silly sounds, or particular tone. The body holds itself in a way that suggests goofy engagement: posture may become bouncy or exaggerated, gestures expansive and silly, attention engaged with the absurd dimension. The state is typically brief but can be recurrent in particular contexts.
Is being silly only for children?
No, though adults often access silliness less readily than children. Silliness contributes to wellbeing, relationships, and various life outcomes throughout life. Some adults resist silliness through patterns including taking themselves too seriously, particular self-concepts that exclude silly engagement, or sustained patterns that block lighter positive states; the resistance often costs more than the silliness would cost. Various adult contexts welcome and benefit from silliness including close friendships, family dynamics, particular romantic relationships, parties, games, particular celebrations, and casual contexts. Engagement with children often supports access to silliness in adults through the children's invitation to silly play. The capacity for silliness appears widely shared throughout life though substantial individual variation exists in how readily it develops and how comfortable adults are with allowing themselves to be silly. Many adults benefit from cultivating capacity for appropriate silliness as part of broader engagement with positive states.
How is silliness different from humour?
Humour is the broader category. Silliness has the specific goofy absurd quality. A person can have humour without silliness (broader engagement with what is funny without specifically silly goofy quality). Silliness involves the specific dimensions that broader humour does not require. Humour can be sophisticated, dry, ironic, or various other qualities; silliness specifically involves the goofy absurd dimension that produces particular childlike pleasure. The distinction matters because the contexts appropriate for each may differ: sophisticated humour may be welcome in many contexts where silliness might not fit; silliness is welcome in particular contexts that specifically support play and goofy engagement. Both serve well in their appropriate contexts. The two often coexist or transition between each other; silliness is one specific form that humour can take.
How do you bring more silliness into your life?
Several practices help. Allowing silliness when contexts welcome it supports both the experience and broader engagement with life; the resistance to silliness that many adults maintain often costs more than the silliness itself would cost. Building relationships and contexts that welcome silliness through connections with people who can engage in silly play and contexts that allow for it supports more frequent silliness than relying on spontaneous occurrence in unsupportive contexts. Engaging with children when possible often supports access to silliness through their invitation to silly play; the engagement is mutually beneficial. Recognising context appropriateness supports better social functioning while still allowing silliness in contexts that welcome it. When silliness has become mask for difficulty including unresolved emotional issues or other concerns warranting direct engagement, addressing what may be underlying avoidance produces better outcomes than continued silliness that prevents engagement.
No source-level citations are stored for this entry yet. The dictionary draws on the broader literature in affective neuroscience, psychology and cross-cultural emotion research. See the About page for the project's wider references.
Silliness sits in the joy family as one of its lighter forms. It overlaps with giddiness as closely related state, with mischief when playful naughty quality is involved, with whimsy when delightful odd fanciful quality is central, with what play research has examined as significant for wellbeing and relationships, and with what cultural traditions across regions have engaged with through various framings of appropriate play and silly engagement.
See where silliness sits among the other 402 emotions.
Open Silliness on the wheel