Obsequious
[əb-sē-kwē-əs]
Part of speech: adjective
Origin: Latin, 15th century
1.
Obedient or submissive
2.
Attentive and compliant to the point of excess
Examples of Obsequious in a sentence
"His obsequious attitude meant he was always eager to please his superiors."
"The hotel's butler was positively obsequious, constantly opening the door, carrying luggage, and calling a car for us."
About Obsequious
Often used as the ultimate metaphor for blind following, lemmings have long been believed to commit mass suicide by following each other obsequiously off of cliffs. The truth is that this behavior has never been naturally observed, and stems from a manipulated scene in a 1958 nature documentary from Disney.
Did you Know?
Obsequious, a word used to describe followers, shares its Latin roots with words like sequel (a story that follows the first) and sequence (a series of numbers that follow each other.)
