simper
A foolish, frivolous, self-conscious, or affected smile; a smirk.
Noun
- A foolish, frivolous, self-conscious, or affected smile; a smirk.
- Yes, another world it was, when these black ruins, white in their new mortar and fresh chiselling, first saw the sun as walls, long ago. Gauge not, with thy dilettante compasses, with that placid dilettante simper, the...
- He paused, and then a strange expression appeared on his lips. It was very like a simper. - 1972, Eric Ambler, The Levanter, published 2009, →ISBN, page 158:
Origin
Uncertain; compare (probably from) Danish simper / semper (“coy”), German zimper (“elegant, dainty”).
Forms
Related
Verb
- To smile in a foolish, frivolous, self-conscious, coy, obsequious, or smug manner.
- How the fools kotowed and simpered while I looked over their jewels and speculated upon how much I could get for them! - 1915, Harold MacGrath, chapter 24, in The Voice In The Fog:
- a whimpering, simpering child - 1940, “Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered”, Lorenz Hart (lyrics), Richard Rodgers (music):
- But where daft Nell simpers at him and tries to muss his slicked hair and pull it forward over his broad, Christian brow, my little Dot is looking nowhere but at the ground, still praying, praying even while she stands,...
- To glimmer; to twinkle.
- Yet can I mark how stars above / Simper and shine. - 1633, George Herbert, The Search: