OBSEQUIOUS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Obsequious

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/əbsˈikwiəs/ Listen

adjective

Obsequious adj.

Promptly obedient, or submissive, to the will of another; compliant; yielding to the desires of another; devoted. (Obs.) "His servants weeping, Obsequious to his orders, bear him hither."

Servilely or meanly attentive; compliant to excess; cringing; fawning; as, obsequious flatterer, parasite. "There lies ever in "obsequious" at the present the sense of an observance which is overdone, of an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of another."

Of or pertaining to obsequies; funereal. (R.) "To do obsequious sorrow."

Synonyms: Compliant; obedient; servile. See Yielding.

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Etymology of 'Obsequious'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Obsequious" Quotes from Famous Books

... for the presence of the two other men in the car. She sensed that it was only their being there that kept Dean from making a scene. There was nothing in his manner toward her now of the obsequious chauffeur. While she admitted to herself that there was no longer the necessity for his continuing in his fictitious character she strongly resented his loverlike jealousy for her welfare and welcomed the chief's return, for she saw from his face, as he came running up to the car, that he ...

— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston

... longer the only world to which all else in the firmament were obsequious attendants, but a mere insignificant speck among the host of heaven! Man no longer the centre and cynosure of creation, but, as it were, an insect crawling on the surface of this little speck! All this not set down in crabbed Latin ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... was so selfish, obsequious, and versatile as to incur universal opprobrium; he had also another misfortune for a man of society,—he became fat and lethargic. 'My brother Ned' Horace Walpole remarks, 'says he is grown of less consequence, though more weight.' And on another occasion, speaking of a majority in the House of ...

— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... for halting at each booth and inspecting the wares, and each time that I made as if to do so, the obsequious peasantry fell away before me, making way invitingly. But Messer Arcolano urged me along, saying that we had far to go, and that in Piacenza there were better shops and that I should have more time to ...

— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in power and in infamy were the ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

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