Word.ws English Dictionary

Heepish

Heepish adjective: exhibiting cloying, insincere obsequiousness.

Adjective

Heepish (comparative more Heepish, superlative most Heepish)

  1. Exhibiting cloying, insincere obsequiousness.
    • The London Times will, we presume, impugn the motives of the charity—call it Pecksniffian and Heep-ish—or possibly try to prove that the Federals had no hand in the good deed.1863 Jan, “Editor's Table”, in The Continental Monthly, volume III, number 1, page 127
    • The two functionaries were all oleaginous smiles and Heepish hand-wringing declaring their eagerness to be of service to such a fine and deserving young person.2001, Nicholas Peel, The Lost Story, iUniverse, page 130

Examples of Heepish in a sentence

  • Dalziel scratched his crotch reflectively, then replied in a fawning Heepish tone, “I'm sorry, Mrs Maciver, I know what you must be feeling, but it's not my decision. ..."2004, Reginald Hill, Good Morning, Midnight, HarperCollins:
  • As an interviewer, i quickly grasped that the key was to ingratiate myself with the subject, to be admiring, even humble, but not Heepish.2014, Siri Hustvedt, The Blazing World, Simon and Schuster, page 40:

Forms of Heepish

comparativemore Heepish
superlativemost Heepish

Origin of Heepish

From Heep + -ish: From the Dickens character Uriah Heep, a yes man noted for his cloying humility, obsequiousness, and insincerity.

Words formed from Heepish

Phrases with Heepish

Questions about Heepish

What does Heepish mean?
Heepish means exhibiting cloying, insincere obsequiousness.
How do you use Heepish in a sentence?
Dalziel scratched his crotch reflectively, then replied in a fawning Heepish tone, “I'm sorry, Mrs Maciver, I know what you must be feeling, but it's not my decision. ..."
What part of speech is Heepish?
Heepish is an adjective.

Words near Heepish in the dictionary

  1. Heeney
  2. Heeneys
  3. Heenfaru
  4. HEENT
  5. Heep
  6. Heepish
  7. Heepishly
  8. Heepishness
  9. Heeps
  10. Heepses
  11. Heepster

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Heepish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Heepish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heepish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.