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WordWealth: zany
za·ny
 ,
adj., -ni·er, -ni·est,
n., pl. -nies.
–adj.
1. ludicrously or
whimsically comical; clownish.
–n.
2. one who plays
the clown or fool in order to amuse others. 3. a comically
wild or eccentric person. 4. a secondary stock character in
old comedies who mimicked his master. 5. a professional
buffoon; clown. 6. a silly person; simpleton. 7. a
slavish attendant or follower.
[1560–70; (< MF) < It
zan(n)i (later zanno) a servant character
in the commedia dell'arte, perh. orig. the character's name, the
Upper Italian form of Tuscan Gianni, for Giovanni
John]
—za  ni·ly,
adv.
—za ni·ness,
zany·ism,
n.
—za ny·ish,
adj.
—Syn.3. kook,
crazy, lunatic.
(Random
House Webster's Unabridged).
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Thesaurus
And investors saw a growing number of companies using fake pro forma numbers to pump up their earnings releases. In their
zany, hyperventilated quest for the corporate grail--steady earnings growth from quarter to quarter--companies left investors feeling like no executive ever could be trusted again.——
Elizabeth MacDonald special for Forbes:
'Watching
The Books'; Feb 04, 2003
Cross the border into the Netherlands and motoring habits immediately become
more civilized -- though the Dutch have gone overboard for speed bumps, which
they call drempels. (A perfect name: all speed bumps should henceforth
be known as drempels.) This suggests that driving can be employed as a
barometer of civic cohesion. Belgium, a nation of terrible drivers, has
continuing problems with high-level government corruption; Europe's other most
corrupt country, Italy, is also one with a poor driving environment. Many
developing-world nations have zany driving environments, too, and countries
such as Pakistan -- where I've lived, and where the overall sociology still
remains feudal -- are ones in which people have not yet developed the sense
that voluntary self-discipline in the public sphere is good for everybody.
Roads thus become places to work out hostilities rather than places to pass
through alive on your way to somewhere else.
——
Gregg Easterbrook, 'The Car as
Social Barometer'; the Atlantic; May 14, 1997
Their hilarious adventures to
thwart the villainess, with the fat man as the hero, the emperor-llama his
increasingly chastened buddy, have the energy, absurdity and zany humour
of classic cartoons, not the usual sentimental, high-minded stuff that you often
get from Disney, but the slapstick of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. So much so that
someone has already said that this is the best Warner Brothers cartoon Disney
ever made.——
George Perry in Film Review,
'The Emperor's New Groove';
BBC; Feb 12, 2001
DEBATE YOUR WORD
Michael Quinion, an English word expert, comments 'zany' from a
British point of view:
Zany quickly evolved related senses, first contemptuously
suggesting someone who was a hanger-on or toady, then somebody who
played the fool for the amusement of others. The noun survived almost
to our day; Tennyson wrote in 1847 that “The printers are awful
zanies, they print erasures and corrections too, and other sins they
commit of the utmost inhumanity”. But that –y ending made the
word look like an adjective, and that is how it has more and more been
employed, until now one really can’t use it as a noun. (Read
'zany' in depth)
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