obsequious

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin obsequiōsus (“compliant, obedient”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from obsequium (“compliance, dutiful service”),^[2][5][7][4] from obsequor (“to comply with, accommodate oneself to another's will”),^[5][6][8] formed from ob- (“to, toward”) and sequor (“to follow”),^[3][4] from Proto-Indo-European *sekw- (“to follow”).^[3][5] Barnhart allows for the influence of Middle French obséquieux, and Weekley took the word from French,^[7][9] but the OED only compares the French word, recorded from 1500.^[2] The Latin verb's root is also behind Ancient Greek ἕπομαι (hépomai) and Lithuanian sekti.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Compliant with another's wishes, prompt to serve, dutiful: 1447, in Bokenham's Lives of Saints, in the revised OED.^[2] Barnhart reads that 1447 record as the noun obsequyousnesse and dates the adjective to about 1475,^[7] when it occurs in the morality play Mankind with obsequyouse seruyce.^[11] Etymonline likewise gives the late 15th century for the adjective and the mid-15th for the noun,^[5] while Dictionary.com has 1375–1425.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The word carried no blame at first.^[13] It meant what the Latin meant, ready and dutiful obedience, and so it is still in Johnson (1755), whose first sense is "obedient; compliant; not resisting", with examples from Bacon and Milton,^[14] and even in Macaulay.^[15] The sense slid downward toward the servile and fawning, as with officious, according to Weekley.^[9] Etymonline finds this by the 1590s,^[5] Barnhart and the OED in Marston's Antonio and Mellida, dated by Barnhart to 1599 and by the OED to the printed text of 1602.^[7][2] Today it is the only common sense, and the older one is rare.^[2][16] Shakespeare added a passing use from obsequy, the funeral rite: "dutiful in showing respect for the dead", from Titus Andronicus in 1594,^[2][15] which Johnson glossed as "funereal".^[14] A 1657 translation even called a creeping plant obsequious, after post-classical Latin.^[2]

Timeline

• 1447 – compliant, dutiful, prompt to serve.^[2] Barnhart dates the adjective to about 1475.^[7]
• 1594 – dutiful in performing funeral rites (obsolete by 1681).^[2]
• 1602 – servile, fawning.^[2] Barnhart dates the same text to 1599.^[7]
• 1657 – of a plant, creeping (obsolete).^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Too eager to please or obey someone in authority; servile, fawning: an obsequious waiter hovering over the table.^[4][16][2]
2. (rare) Dutifully compliant with another's will.^[16][2][4]
3. (obsolete, 1594–1681) Dutiful in performing obsequies or showing respect for the dead.^[2][4]

Word family

• obsequiously
• obsequiousness
• overobsequious
• unobsequious
• obsequiosity

Related words

• obsequy
• sequence
• sequel
• sue
• suit
• consequence
• pursue
• persecute
• second

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
12. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
13. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins