Weekly Word: Jejune

Jejune is fun to say, but it means “not interesting; dull”. Its other meanings include “immature”, “uninformed”, and “lacking in nutritive value”. Notice a theme here? It comes from the Latin word jejunus, meaning “empty, dry, barren”, or literally “hungry”.

You might know that déjeuner is French for “to eat breakfast or lunch”. Well, it comes from Latin dis- “undo” and jejunare “to fast” — in other words, to break the fast, which is why our first meal of the day is called breakfast.

World Wide Words has an interesting article on jejune, which ends with the writer stating that he avoids using the word “because it’s far from common and because people differ in their views about what it means”. But wouldn’t you hate to see a word go extinct? If more people used jejune, it wouldn’t be so uncommon anymore!