Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Insincere worship, coming from the lips and not from the heart.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Do you offer Him your heart's devotion and praise, or is it only lip-worship?

    The One Great Reality Louisa Clayton

  • Isaiah heaps upon the common objects of men's trust, whether ships, walls or towers (ii.), lip-worship, xxix. 13f., or the gorgeous services of the sanctuary, cunning diplomacy or the projected alliance with Egypt or Assyria (xxx.).

    Introduction to the Old Testament John Edgar McFadyen

  • It is not lip-worship, but heart-homage, a reverence in which the soul is always found upon its knees.

    My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year John Henry Jowett

  • The days of oratorio had by no means finished yet; oratorio was the thing; an instrumental concert was very well for a change once in a while, provided there were plenty of Italian opera airs to sugar the nasty pill; Haydn was the last word in symphony, the homage paid to Beethoven being the merest lip-worship.

    Richard Wagner Runciman, John F 1913

  • For around Cyrus, standing alone and solitary on his height, there had gathered the great illusion that makes theft honest and falsehood truth -- the illusion of Success; and simple John Henry Pendleton, who, after nineteen years of poverty and memory, was bereft alike of classical pedantry and of physical comforts, had grown a little weary of the endless lip-worship of a single moment in history.

    Virginia Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow 1909

  • Then it is as if the Invisible Power that had been the object of lip-worship and lip-resignation became visible, according to the imagery of the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the wings of the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the rolling fiery visitations.

    Daniel Deronda George Eliot 1849

  • God grant that they may keep through youth and manhood, and through the grave, and through all worlds to come, the tender and childlike heart, which we too often have hardened in ourselves by bigotry and superstition, and dead faith, and lip-worship!

    Sermons for the Times Charles Kingsley 1847

  • I am not one of those mealy-mouthed youths, full of their own deeds and lip-worship, Sire, but

    Alroy The Prince Of The Captivity Benjamin Disraeli 1842

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