Word.ws English Dictionary

lip service

lip service noun: promising but empty talk; words without action or intention.

Noun

lip service (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) Promising but empty talk; words without action or intention.
    • The candidate gave lip service to fixing the problems, but it is doubtful that he will do much.
    • Don’t madam me, — I can’t bear none of your lip service. I’m a plain-spoken woman, that’s what I am, and I like other people’s tongues to be as plain as mine.1897, Richard Marsh, The Beetle
  2. (slang, vulgar) Cunnilingus (sometimes also referred to as giving lip).
    • Jack gave Samantha lip service.

lip service meaning in Tamil, Tagalog and Indonesian

lip service in Tamil

போலி வழிபாடு, பாவனை

lip service in Tagalog

Empty talk; words absent of action or intention
ngawngaw

lip service in Indonesian

Empty talk; words absent of action or intention
omon-omon

Examples of lip service in a sentence

  • Your love is thick, and it swallowed me whole / You're so much braver than I gave you credit for / That's not lip service1995, Alanis Morissette, “Head over Feet”, in Jagged Little Pill:
  • “My prayer is that it’s not just lip service.”2020 November 11, John Eligon, Audra D. S. Burch, “Black Voters Helped Deliver Biden a Presidential Victory. Now What?”, in The New York...

Synonyms of lip service

All synonyms of lip service

Forms of lip service

alternative formlipservice
alternative formlip-service

Origin of lip service

First use appears c. 1590, in A Treatise against Witchcraft by Henry Holland. Compare earlier lip-labour.

Questions about lip service

What does lip service mean?
Lip service means promising but empty talk; words without action or intention.
What is lip service in Tamil?
Lip service in Tamil is போலி வழிபாடு, பாவனை. See Lip service meaning in Tamil.
How do you use lip service in a sentence?
Your love is thick, and it swallowed me whole / You're so much braver than I gave you credit for / That's not lip service
What part of speech is lip service?
Lip service is a noun.

Words near lip service in the dictionary

  1. lip religions
  2. lip salve
  3. lip salves
  4. lip seal
  5. lip seals
  6. lip service
  7. lip sync
  8. lip synced
  9. lip syncing
  10. lip syncs
  11. lip wisdom

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lip service (page history and authors); lip service (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-lip service.ogg.

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