What is "obsequious"

Usage examples of "obsequious".

Matvei Ilich came up to her with an imposing air and obsequious phrases.

Antony replied to this almost obsequious plea with scant consideration for Liberator sentiments.

Except for the brainless chatter, Selame performed her duties diligently, if with so many flourishes they became a dance of grand gestures and obsequious curtsies.

She swept a hand toward the uplighting surrounding the tropical estate, the pool, and pavilion area trimmed with stately royal palms and littered with overdressed guests and obsequious waiters.

The really perilous course lies in preserving the status quo and institutionalizing our past failed policies: open borders, unlimited immigration, dependence on cheap and illegal labor, obsequious deference to Mexico City, erosion of legal statutes, multiculturalism in our schools, and a general breakdown in the old assimilationist model.

On his death without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of the Roman church.

The response from the second man, whom Sanglier introduced as Superintendent Bruno Siemen, seconded from the organized crime bureau of the Bundeskriminalamt, was almost as obsequious and Claudine guessed Poulard had briefed the German while they waited outside.

Ionian, Aeolian, and Dorian Greek cities and seaports of Asia Province made absolutely sure they treated this eastern potentate with all the obsequious prostrations his sort desired.

Such are the circumstances of this ostentatious and improbable relation, dictated, as it too plainly appears, by the vanity of the monarch, adorned by the unblushing servility of his flatterers, and received without contradiction by a distant and obsequious senate.

Nicky Brompton, whom the porter acknowledged with obsequious discretion because he had visited another lady in the building on previous occasions.

Think back to the sort of kids in high school or college who were into running for student office: dweeby, overgroomed, obsequious to authority, ambitious in a sad way.

Then my uncle, all obsequious, bowed Lord Artos and his Companions down the plank that served to connect ship to shore.

Then, he and the others would become obsequious flunkies-the way capitalists liked their serfs to grovel.

Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of ships before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east.

To think that a man as shrewd, as subtle-minded, as quick-witted, and adroit as himself--a man who had passed through so many troubled epochs, who had served with the same obsequious countenance all the masters who would accept his services--to think that such a man should have been thus duped and betrayed!