In the diaries, Tynan's misogyny, sadism and horny preoccupations warp his sensibility and render him witless in a way only a clever man who fancies himself a studied charmer can be.
In Margaret Drabble's A Summer Birdcage, a character gets married wearing a dirty bra, a proceeding that shocked young female readers of the day (1963) witless, in a way that novelistic divorce, sex before marriage and affairs never could.
She is convinced (and personal experience here suggests she is right) that many New Yorkers who used to think that jury duty was only for those too witless to find a way out are now proud to be chosen.
Service is sometimes witless, epitomized by the way hosts sweep you past a nook that can accommodate coats without ever asking if you'd like it to accommodate yours.
If the attack on Marcelo Lucero was not just witless teenage violence, but rather a way to strike out against a changing world, the change is not going away, and long after this doleful anniversary, people will still need to find a way to make it work.
Instead, we get Sarah Jessica Parker's breathless and witless take on the McQueen style.
I'm sick of the contestants; of their witless self belief and their sweatflop desperation and the way they truly believe that participating in what basically amounts to a succession of dismal Generation Game sausage-making skits demonstrates their unknowable business acumen.
Instead of singing "Girl on Fire" at full volume on the way to an event that has me scared witless (something I do on a regular basis), you'll be filming and answering questions in the car as you drive.
Blasting horns, flashing lights and a swerving metal machine are likely to terrify the animal witless and it will more than likely dart into your way rather than out of it.
"I've been scared witless the whole time, because I know there's such a long way to fall," Lagercrantz confided in his Swedish TV interview last year.
