inanity

Noun

inanity (countable and uncountable, plural inanities)

1. (uncountable) The property of being inane, of lacking material of interest or satisfaction, emptiness.
   • All those who criticise the inanity of the effort required by the stemmatic approach without clearly adopting a position of their own, do not, in my view, touch upon the core of the problem […]2020, Alessandro Bausi, “7.5 Philological practices: Ethiopic”, in Philipp Roelli, editor, Handbook of Stemmatology: History, Methodology, Digital Approaches, De Gruyter, →DOI, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC...
2. Something that is inane.
   • Working in any bureaucracy means being bedeviled by inanities daily.
   • It was incessant matter for amazement how these Olympians would talk over our heads - during meals, for instance - of this or the other social or political inanity, under the delusion that these pale phantasms of reality were among the importances of life.1895, Kenneth Graham, The Golden Age, London, page 5