Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A funeral rite or ceremony.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A funeral rite or ceremony.
- noun Ready compliance; deferential service; obsequiousness.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The last duty or service to a person, rendered after his death; hence, a rite or ceremony pertaining to burial; -- now used only in the plural.
- noun obsolete Obsequiousness.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The last
office for thedead - noun A
funeral rite orservice .
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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Man's introduction could be understood as the uncomfortable relation between obsequiousness and obsequy, that is, between the awkward coincidence of following one's teachers and issuing their burial rites. close window
Notes on ''At the Far End of this Ongoing Enterprise...'' 2005
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Elizabeth's address is a kind of obsequy over, or elegy for, realism.
Disturbing the Peace Lodge, David 2003
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Few doubted the meaning of his plaintive beat, and most even then divined that that solitary, forlorn figure of a drummer was tapping out an obsequy for British colonial power over the thirteen states.
Angel in the Whirlwind Benson Bobrick 1997
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Few doubted the meaning of his plaintive beat, and most even then divined that that solitary, forlorn figure of a drummer was tapping out an obsequy for British colonial power over the thirteen states.
Angel in the Whirlwind Benson Bobrick 1997
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The second day after his obsequy was done reverently, and on his body laid
Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) Thomas Malory Jean Froissart
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The next stanza speaks of "Dye Apguylamys," who is told to prepare the obsequy for Love, and of "Lady Apylton," who had offered a "mass-penny," and the epitaph ends with these stanzas:
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Timber City was goin 'to be the very last doggone drink I was ever goin' to get, I'd kind of strung it along a little -- sort of sipped it slow an 'solemn as become an obsequy.
Prairie Flowers 1921
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The second day after his obsequy was done reverently, and on his body laid a tomb of stone and his banner hanging over him.
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The baylan gave a talk or a prolix prayer, and finished by saying: "May the dead receive that obsequy, by giving good fortune to the living."
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And "You knew Mr. Bowen was no longer living?" she said, with fit obsequy of tone.
Indian Summer William Dean Howells 1878
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