Dictionary

simpering en · ADJ

Meanings

1. Affected, smug, and supercilious.
   • 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 Stoughton), →ISBN:
   • 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:
   • 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 214:
   • That sounds almost simpering. I hate sounding simpering, and over a trifling increase of four coppers on a gold, I definitely do not wish to sound simpering. 2015, L. E. Modesitt, Jr, Madness in Solidar, →ISBN:

Forms

Deriveds

simperingly

simpering en · NOUN

Meanings

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 Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded:

Forms

Relateds

simperer · simping

simpering en · VERB

Meanings

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present) present participle and gerund of simper
   form of simper