• Today's Word

Obsequious

🔊 Listen to the word Obsequious

ob-SEE-kwee-us

Definition

(adjective) Excessively eager to please or obey; fawning and submissive to the point of being insincere.

Example

The new intern was so obsequious — laughing at every joke, volunteering for every errand, agreeing with every opinion — that even the managers who enjoyed the flattery found it unsettling.

Word Origin

Obsequious derives from the Latin obsequiosus, meaning “compliant” or “accommodating,” rooted in obsequium, meaning “compliance” or “dutiful service,” from obsequi — “to follow after” or “to comply with.” It entered English in the 15th century originally without negative connotation, simply describing dutiful service. By the 17th century, writers began using it specifically to describe excessive, servile flattery — and the negative undertone has stuck ever since.

Fun Fact

Shakespeare was particularly fond of skewering obsequious characters — some of literature’s most memorable sycophants appear in his plays, from Osric in Hamlet to Malvolio in Twelfth Night. But the most culturally enduring obsequious archetype may be Uriah Heep from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield — a character so aggressively humble and fawning that his name became a byword for insincere servility. Dickens based him partly on a real person he despised, making Uriah Heep one of literature’s most satisfying acts of revenge through fiction.