Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Pleasing; agreeable.
  • adjective Calculated to please or win favor.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective capable of winning favor.
  • adjective calculated to please or gain favor.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Which ingratiates; which attempts to bring oneself into the favour of another. The implication is often of flattery or insincerity.
  • verb Present participle of ingratiate.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective calculated to please or gain favor
  • adjective capable of winning favor

Etymologies

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Examples

  • My fellow citizens is an apostrophe, a formal address to an audience, whose distance has been shortened by the insertion of the ad hominem term fellow—that is, an ingratiating suggestion to his audience that they start out on his side.

    BREAKFAST WITH SOCRATES ROBERT ROWLAND SMITH 2010

  • My fellow citizens is an apostrophe, a formal address to an audience, whose distance has been shortened by the insertion of the ad hominem term fellow—that is, an ingratiating suggestion to his audience that they start out on his side.

    BREAKFAST WITH SOCRATES ROBERT ROWLAND SMITH 2010

  • It was this that had suggested to him the idea of ingratiating himself with the men who were in power, and thus gain their friendship, their influences and protection.

    Which? or, Between Two Women Ernest Daudet 1879

  • From what I have heard and saw today on the magazine, many people were turned off by the "loser's" ingratiating "Who Me" attitude every week.

    Would Billie Holiday Win American Idol If She Were Still Alive? Anxious Black Woman 2007

  • You know, it wasn't probably the best line in kind of ingratiating yourself with New Hampshire voters.

    CNN Transcript Sep 6, 2007 2007

  • RUSH: Yes, I think it stunned a lot of people, although the members of this group, which migrated to Israel at the end of the '60s led by a Chicago bus driver, they had been kind of ingratiating themselves with Whitney and Bobby for some time and one of them spoke at the recent funeral of her father.

    CNN Transcript May 30, 2003 2003

  • Beautiful to the world is its prosperity, which is like a kind of ingratiating sweetness, false and seductive.

    WN.com - Photown News 2010

  • Beautiful to the world is its prosperity, which is like a kind of ingratiating sweetness, false and seductive.

    WN.com - Photown News 2010

  • Beside her sat a yellow and wrinkled woman of forty-five, with a low neck, in a black headdress, with a toothless smile on her intently-preoccupied and empty face, and in the inner recesses of the box was visible an elderly man in a wide frock-coat and high cravat, with an expression of dull dignity and a kind of ingratiating distrustfulness in his little eyes, with dyed moustache and whiskers, a large meaningless forehead and wrinkled cheeks, by every sign a retired general.

    Chapter XII 1917

  • Beside her sat a yellow and wrinkled woman of forty-five, with a low neck, in a black headdress, with a toothless smile on her intently-preoccupied and empty face, and in the inner recesses of the box was visible an elderly man in a wide frock-coat and high cravat, with an expression of dull dignity and a kind of ingratiating distrustfulness in his little eyes, with dyed moustache and whiskers, a large meaningless forehead and wrinkled cheeks, by every sign a retired general.

    A House of Gentlefolk Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev 1850

Comments

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  • Intending to gain favor or acceptance

    July 8, 2014