How to Use witless in a Sentence

witless

adjective
  • He committed a witless blunder.
  • Try for yourselves, ye witless knaves— Take each to bed your Sally!
    — Ann Manov, Harpers Magazine, 23 June 2026
  • The picture is slick but dull, glitzy but witless, expensively boring.
    — Kyle Smith, National Review, 27 May 2021
  • Some of the more witless pundits mock all this as mere conspiracy theory.
    — John Kass, Twin Cities, 26 Dec. 2019
  • The hapless and witless stars of the show are trying to escape the clutches of a pursuing demon.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 23 Mar. 2018
  • Ayer does a more-than-decent job directing the action scenes, which is what matters most with such a witless genre entry.
    — Peter Debruge, Variety, 10 Jan. 2024
  • This would be a very smart game plan for someone who has no real facts and is hoping someone else will be witless enough to out their own secret scheming.
    — Ariana Romero, refinery29.com, 15 June 2021
  • Conversation is limited to witless small talk about the weather.
    — Rena Gross, Billboard, 30 May 2018
  • An opening sequence sets the film's terror-thriller tone by sending witless corporate goons to retrieve a fossil.
    — Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 22 June 2018
  • Our intolerable situation forces us to welcome such witless dolts to our side.
    — Ana Marie Cox, The New Republic, 3 Apr. 2023
  • Think back on the pathetic rollout of the travel ban, the witless legal defenses, and the serial losses at the courts of appeals.
    — Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine, 12 July 2017
  • And those who are too witless to understand, or pretend witlessness so as to herd others for partisan reasons, do no service to their nation.
    — John Kass, Twin Cities, 27 June 2019
  • But apparently, California just couldn’t abide this challenge to its primacy as the most witless state in the union.
    — Noah Rothman, National Review, 23 Sep. 2024
  • The federal government, in all its wisdom, is once again gearing up to save the witless American people from themselves.
    — Noah Rothman, National Review, 3 Jan. 2025
  • Gavras and Arbery may have other, more singular aims in mind, hidden beneath all the obvious skewering of witless wealth.
    — Richard Lawson, HollywoodReporter, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Evil peasants, dead ignorant, witless mud-wallowers, emmerdeurs, smugglers, thieves.
    — Ew Staff, EW.com, 3 Aug. 2021
  • Once again, witless pundits, economists and politicians don’t understand what’s happening.
    — John Tamny, Forbes, 6 June 2021
  • My favorite element, which mirrors my mystification at the matter-of-factness of the image, is an adorably witless donkey.
    — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 8 Feb. 2021
  • Unfortunately, the presidency has supplanted the House in its role as witless and slavering tribune of the plebs.
    — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 27 Aug. 2019
  • Outrage at the media, with journalists as unwitting (or witless) straight men, is a surefire GOP money-raiser.
    — Jake Bernstein, The New York Review of Books, 8 Apr. 2020
  • So when the state opened eligibility to anyone old enough to drive, masses of Minnesotans logged onto vaccine appointment websites for the very first time, full of witless optimism.
    — Star Tribune, 1 Apr. 2021
  • This 1836 work — in which a witless fop is assumed to be a powerful state functionary by corrupt politicians in the provinces — infuses scathing satire with giddy surrealism.
    — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 24 May 2017
  • What the obsequious emails to Epstein seem to illustrate is that many people with influence were willing to overlook his crimes, horrific behavior, and witless observations as long as there was something in it for them.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 14 Nov. 2025
  • Yes, for his ignorance of company policy but, more importantly, for his witless inexperience with the basic tenets of successful human interaction.
    — Ana Veciana-Suarez, miamiherald, 15 Aug. 2017
  • Which are all necessary to distract from such toothless inside-baseball Hollywood satire, such witless, outdated pandemic observation and the sheer Saharan humor desert that is the dialogue.
    — Jessica Kiang, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2022
  • In these stretches of the film, Everybody Knows could almost tip into Michael Haneke territory, the rot and chaos of contemporary society consuming these witless people who are slaves to their own selfish impulses.
    — Richard Lawson, HWD, 9 May 2018
  • Which isn’t to write off the higher-concept grossout shtick — something of a big-screen novelty in 2026, when equivalent material is largely the preserve of witless TikTok content, executed with far less flair and good cheer.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 25 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'witless.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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