simpering

Affected, smug, and supercilious.

Adjective

  1. Affected, smug, and supercilious.
    • Why, look at him—look at this simpering self-righteous mug! - 1892, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXI, in The American Claimant, New York, N.Y.: Charles L[uther] Webster & Co., →OCLC, page...
    • I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure. - 1926, Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises:
    • I had high hopes when I moved to Spyglass, but simpering gossip on celebrity parties seems to be the closest I've gotten so far to Dad's vocation. - 2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, London: Sceptre (Hodder and...

Forms

more simpering most simpering

Derived

simperingly

Noun

  1. The act of one who simpers.
    • Well, but Polly attended, as I said; and there were strange simperings, and bowing, and courtesying, between them; the honest gentleman seeming not to know how to let his mistress wait upon him[…] - 1740, Samuel...

Forms

simperings

Related

simperer simping

Verb

  1. present participle and gerund of simper