Monday, August 31, 2009

Supercilious Meaning and Usage


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Supercilious Meaning:

adjective
- behaving in a superior and arrogant manner
- feeling or showing disdain; exhibiting haughty and careless contempt

Supercilious Usage:

“a supercilious look.”
supercilious manner”
supercilious attitude”
“a supercilious officer”
“a supercilious critic”
“his mother eyed my clothes with a supercilious air”
“curled his lip in a supercilious smile”

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Derivatives:
superciliously - adverb
superciliousness - noun

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Use supercilious in a sentence:

1. Jane is either too supercilious to do menial tasks around the office or not smart enough to figure out how they are done.

2. I was irritated by his supercilious detachment.

3. Nash looked as if he had seen the hollowness of things, for his face wore a bored, supercilious look.

4. He merely smiled in his supercilious way, until the Bishop felt very much inclined to spring upon him and throw him out of the cab.

5. I do not like your arrogant and supercilious attitude towards people.

6. His supercilious demeanor undermines his interaction with colleagues in his department.

7. He ended his speech on a supercilious note which was quite unexpected of a person of his balanced and stable temperament

8. Pierre is so supercilious that he won't dine in a restaurant whose waiters don't speak with a French accent.

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Supercilious Synonyms:
arrogant, cavalier, clannish, cliquish, condescending, contemptuous, contumelious, disdainful, dismissive, exclusive, haughty, imperious, insolent, lofty, lordly, overbearing, overweening, patronizing, pompous, pretentious, prideful, proud, scornful, sneering, sniffy, snippy, snobbish, superior, swaggering, withering.

Supercilious Antonyms:
humble, modest, servile


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Some more examples:

1. While they talked of him he stood a little apart from the others, watching the noisy party with a good-humored but faintly supercilious expression.

2. There was in her no longer the superciliousness which had irritated him. She was so accustomed to him now.

3. She was very supercilious towards her customers.

4. The governor gave the crowd a supercilious smile prior to his speech.

5. Cordelia had been quite the sugarplum over the last month or so, but now that she had what she wanted, she'd reverted to the sour, supercilious, often suspicious woman Susan had grown up with.

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