January 06, 2013 - zany (noun) - What does it mean? - 1 : clown2
: a silly or foolish person - How do you use it? - "And what a
zany an old chap must be, to light a bonfire when there's no
youngsters to please." (Thomas Hardy, _Return of the Native_) -
Are you a word wiz? Who do you think first used the word "zany"
in English?You may be more familiar with the adjective "zany,"
but "zany" was first introduced to English by William
Shakespeare as a noun. In Shakespeare's play _Love's Labour's
Lost_ (written around 1594), one of the characters looks for a
zany who "knows the trick to make my Lady laugh." That was the
first known use of "zany" in English, but the word had been part
of Italian plays long before that. In Italian plays, the "zany"
was a character who mimicked everyone else on stage. That goofy
pest was always called "Zanni," a nickname for "Giovanni," the
Italian form of "John." When English speakers adopted the
character, they took his name too, and gradually transformed it
into the modern word "za