The word "Silly" has not always meant to be foolish. Instead, its meaning has changed a number of times from being lucky, happy, blissful or weak. Middle English refers to the varieties of the English language spoken after the Norman Conquest (1066) until the late 15th century and is the period of where the word "Silly" originated from.
Its first known use was in the 14th century. It derives from the old English word "sely" which once meant happy, lucky, blessed or blissful. This word sely had and origin of its own as was changed through its spelling several times. It first began with the the Old English word gesælig meaning"happy, fortuitous, prosperous" which is related to sæl meaning "happiness" from Proto-Germanic sæligas. Basically, all of these words stemming from Good old english word "gesælig" , Proto-Germanic word "sæligas" , Old High German word "salig" and similar sounding words in many other ancient european languages having the root word "sel"carried the meaning of " happy, prosperous" in early periods. Soon after, the word "seely" was developed in which we have devised the word "silly" from.
However, this change from an "e" to an "I" in "seely" is very uncommon and has only happened in a limited amount of words. Although the change of the spelling "silly" hasn't changed any further, the word has still had a considerable sense of development moving from "happy" to "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent" (c. 1200), to "harmless," to "pitiable" (late 13c.), "weak" (c. 1300), to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish" (1570s). The word then went on to mean "stunned, dazed as by a blow" (1886) in knocked silly, etc.
Silly then changed its meaning tendency toward "stunned, dazed as by a blow" (1886) in knocked silly, etc. Silly season in journalism slang is from 1861 (August and September, when newspapers compensate for a lack of hard news by filling up with trivial stories).
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