sanctimonious
adjective
G. B. Shaw
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How Shakespeare Used Sanctimonious
There’s nothing sacred about sanctimonious—at least not anymore. But in the early 1600s, the English adjective was still sometimes used to describe someone truly holy or pious, a sense at an important remove from today’s use describing someone who acts or behaves as though they are morally superior to others. (The now-obsolete “pious” sense recalls the meaning of the word’s Latin parent, sanctimonia, meaning “holiness” or “sanctity.”) Shakespeare used both the “holy” and “holier-than-thou” senses of sanctimonious in his work, referring in The Tempest to the “sanctimonious” (that is, “holy”) ceremonies of marriage, and in Measure for Measure to “the sanctimonious pirate that went to sea with the Ten Commandments but scraped one out of the table.” (Apparently, the pirate found the restriction on stealing inconvenient.)
Examples of sanctimonious in a Sentence
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 23 Oct. 2024
Fiennes is backed by a stellar supporting cast that, in addition to Tucci's firebrand Bellini, included John Lithgow as a sanctimonious curate and Carlos Diehz as Cardinal Benitez, intriguing and comforting in his calm stillness.
—Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 2 Sep. 2024
Most of this managed to come off both lazy and sanctimonious.
—David Polansky, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 12 July 2024
Nope — those three sanctimonious defenders of our democracy are all down with the deep-state’s diminution of our democracy.
—Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 24 June 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near sanctimonious
Cite this Entry
“Sanctimonious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sanctimonious. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
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