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Obsequious

(pronounced ub-see-kwee-us or ob-see-kwee-us)  adjective

Definition

characterized by servility or self-abasing, abject compliance; extremely deferential; fawning; marked by excessive display of obedience and attentiveness to somebody's wishes.

Main Example

• The next time you are watching a television news program and there is a video clip of a head of state from Asia or Africa, take a close look at that person's immediate surroundings. Chances are that a majority of the people flanking that leader are not designated security personnel but fawning officials bowing deeply to open doors and clear the way, bending forwards and backwards in sync with the head of state's expressions and movements, and looking at the dignitary hawk-eyed for an opportunity to satisfy the slightest need he or she may have. Obsequiousness is writ large on such officials' faces and in their bearing.

Workplace Examples

• Robert is not just the CEO--he's also the founder of our extraordinarily successful and fast-growing company. Therefore, managers and others accept his directions very enthusiastically. You'll witness a lot of obsequiousness when he's running a meeting.
• I don't have much respect for Guy--he's an outright toady. The way he goes about obsequiously bending over backwards whenever folks from corporate are visiting, even though some of them are of lower rank than us, makes me cringe.

Other Examples

• a customer service trainer telling new recruits: "When a customer enters the store, immediately greet them with a big smile. And if they cannot find what they are looking for, move with speed and briskness to show them where the merchandise is. But on the other hand, you do not want to behave obsequiously, acting like someone who is hopelessly servile."
• Leslie Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who once regarded Henry Kissinger as his "intellectual hero," now considering the famous diplomat and secretary of state to be "the typical product of an authoritarian background--devious with his peers, domineering with his subordinates, obsequious to his superiors"—this from Walter Isaacson's biography of Kissinger
• a few Republican friends of this author expressing their displeasure with the apparently "obsequious relationship" between some of their party's lawmakers in Washington D.C. and the loudest conservative voices in the media--people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh
• the sensational discovery three years ago of slave labor camps in northern China's brick kilns, where abducted children were being forced to work without pay for as many as nineteen hours a day and on a diet of just bread and water, because kiln owners were flouting the laws with impunity thanks to the obsequiousness of local municipal authorities

© 2010 V.J. Singal
No part of this may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the author.