Dull, uninteresting, or unsatisfying; devoid of nourishment, substance, or significance.
→Synonyms of jejune include flat, stale, arid, insipid, and vapid (word 37 of Level 8).
Jejune comes from the Latin jejunus, fasting, hungry, barren, dry. From the same source comes the anatomical term jejunum (jiJOO-num), the middle section of the small intestine, between the duodenum and the ileum. The jejunum took that name, the dictionaries tell us, because in postmortem dissections it was found barren of digestive contents and therefore believed to be empty after death.
The adjective jejune was once used to mean hungry, fasting, without food, but that sense is obsolete and in modern usage jejune is used figuratively to mean barren of interest, dull and unsatisfying, devoid of nourishment, substance, or significance. A jejune diet lacks nourishment; jejune food is tasteless and unsatisfying. A jejune idea or a jejune method lacks appeal because it is devoid of substance or significance. A jejune movie or jejune novel is dull, uninteresting, insipid.
If you look up jejune in a current dictionary, you will also see another definition of the word: youthful, childish, immature, puerile, as jejune behavior or a jejune response to a serious question. Whence comes this sense of the word, which is so clearly unconnected to the root meaning, barren of substance or appeal?
For an answer let’s turn to William Safire, the language maven of The New York Times, who writes a column for that paper’s Sunday magazine called “On Language.” On October 16, 1994, Safire reported that he had queried Jacques Barzun, one of the world’s foremost authorities on English usage, about this extended sense of the word, and the venerable professor responded that “the meaning ‘youthful, childish’ for jejune” had gotten into the dictionaries “only as a concession to the misusers.”
According to Safire, “the original meaning of jejune—‘empty of food, meager’—led to its modern sense of ‘dull, insipid.’ Probably because the word sounded like juvenile, it picked up a meaning of ‘puerile, childish,’ which,” Safire asserts, “is the way it is most commonly used today.” (Yet another example of the insidious sounds-like syndrome at work.)
Safire then poses the eternal question regarding capricious usage: “Should we stand with the prescriptivists, as Barzun suggests, and hold fast to the ‘proper’ meaning? Or do we go along with the language slobs, adopting as ‘correct’ a mistake merely because it is so frequently made?”
Here’s how Safire answers his own question: “At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning. We should resist its adoption, pointing out the error, for years; mockery helps; if the meaning persists, though, it is senseless to ignore the new sense. I say jejune means puerile now,” Safire concludes.
I disagree with Mr. Safire, and stand with Mr. Barzun on the side of reserving jejune for the meaning “devoid of nourishment, substance, or significance.” That is my crotchet, and I’m proud of it. However, although few people know the word jejune, I will concede that many of those who do now use it to mean childish or immature; and therefore, as Mr. Safire suggests, resistance to this change in meaning may now be effete, and further mockery of it may be jejune—which you may take as meaning either dull, insipid, or juvenile, immature.
Welcome to the war of words, my verbally advantaged friend. What will be your strategy for this controversial word jejune?
