Insouciant

By Deane Barker tags: definition
Updates
This content has been updated 1 time since it was first published. The last update happened .

Definition: unconcerned; blithe, to the point of carelessness

It’s a negation of the French word “soucier,” which means “to bother or trouble.”

Why I Looked It Up

From Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives:

Hitler’s insouciant remark that “we’ll have to do without science for a few years” was as self-destructive in his day as it would be in ours.

Update

Added on

From Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, when discussing Chevy Chase being nonchalant about his growing fame:

Opportunity for such insouciance soon faded as the evidence of his celebrity became too obvious to ignore.

Links from this – Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives August 14, 2024

This is an interesting book about how perfection can be damaging sometimes. It’s a collection of stories about how “messes” – or, imperfections – contributed to some system to make it better. In some senses, it reminded me of A Perfect Mess or Antifragile , but with a more evolutionary bent. How…

Links from this – Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live February 1, 2025

This is an excellent, detailed history of the first 10 years of Saturday Night Live . I was surprised it only covered the first 10 years, but then I further surprised to find that it was written in 1986. (Apparently this book was a tell-all scandal back then. I was reading the Wikipedia page for…

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