Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Funereal; pertaining to funeral rites.
- Absorbed in grief, as a mourner at a funeral.
- Promptly obedient or submissive to the will of another; ever ready to obey, serve, or assist; compliant; dutiful.
- Hence Servilely complaisant; showing a mean readiness to fall in with the will of another; cringing; fawning; sycophantic.
- Synonyms Servile, slavish, sycophantic. See
obedience .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective obsolete Promptly obedient, or submissive, to the will of another; compliant; yielding to the desires of another; devoted.
- adjective Servilely or meanly attentive; compliant to excess; cringing; fawning.
- adjective rare Of or pertaining to obsequies; funereal.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective archaic
Obedient , compliant with someone else's orders or wishes. - adjective Excessively
eager to please or toobey all instructions;fawning ,subservient . - adjective obsolete Of or pertaining to
obsequies ,funereal .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective attentive in an ingratiating or servile manner
- adjective attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In addition, there's a new book about Shyamalan, The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale and the making of this film, which is apparently an exercise in obsequious flattery.
Actions Speaking Loudly as Words Roger Sutton 2006
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The waiters at the club were all white-jacketed middle-aged black men who could not be called obsequious but belonged culturally to another generation, one that knew how to be selectively deaf and to pretend that the clientele they served held them in high regard.
The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010
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The waiters at the club were all white-jacketed middle-aged black men who could not be called obsequious but belonged culturally to another generation, one that knew how to be selectively deaf and to pretend that the clientele they served held them in high regard.
The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010
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The waiters at the club were all white-jacketed middle-aged black men who could not be called obsequious but belonged culturally to another generation, one that knew how to be selectively deaf and to pretend that the clientele they served held them in high regard.
The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010
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The waiters at the club were all white-jacketed middle-aged black men who could not be called obsequious but belonged culturally to another generation, one that knew how to be selectively deaf and to pretend that the clientele they served held them in high regard.
The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010
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I dare say you know two types of natives, which may be called the obsequious and the sullen?
The Ebb-Tide Lloyd Osbourne 1907
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I try to tread a not-middle line between following the pure dictates of cold logic which would involve going to the gym as well as not being in any political party and the kind of obsequious loyalty and jam-tomorrow logic you see in members of the other two parties.
What did Evan Harris actually say? Alix Mortimer 2010
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That kind of obsequious attitude plus Gordon Brown's 'light touch regulation' were taken by the 'spiv' element in the City as the signal that anything goes.
John Rentoul today puts Trevor Kavanagh and myself in the... 2009
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That kind of obsequious attitude plus Gordon Brown's 'light touch regulation' were taken by the 'spiv' element in the City as the signal that anything goes.
John Rentoul today puts Trevor Kavanagh and myself in the... 2009
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I am impressed, you appear to have used the word "obsequious" properly even if what you were saying was false.
"He's a serial exaggerator. If I was being unkind I would say he's a liar, but it's a habit he ought to drop." Ann Althouse 2009
super-logos commented on the word obsequious
Isn't this from the Latin preposition, ob, meaning in front of, and the infinitive, sequere, meaning to follow?
August 9, 2008
dailyword commented on the word obsequious
007 used this word when he was talking to Sir Godfrey when they were at Zorin's estate.
June 5, 2012