Word.ws English Dictionary

Uriah Heepish

Uriah Heepish adjective: exhibiting cloying, insincere obsequiousness.

Adjective

Uriah Heepish (comparative more Uriah Heepish, superlative most Uriah Heepish)

  1. Exhibiting cloying, insincere obsequiousness.
    • Flunky opens the door, his face wreathed in a Uriah-Heepish smile of servility.1897 August, Paul E. Jenks, “Coasting the Mediterranean Awheel”, in Outing, volume XXX, number 5, page 462
    • I am never going to adopt the Uriah Heepish attitude toward trustees that characterized Mrs. Lippett's manners.1915, Jean Webster, Dear Enemy, Grosset & Dunlap, page 77

Forms of Uriah Heepish

comparativemore Uriah Heepish
superlativemost Uriah Heepish

Origin of Uriah Heepish

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

Words formed from Uriah Heepish

Questions about Uriah Heepish

What does Uriah Heepish mean?
Uriah Heepish means exhibiting cloying, insincere obsequiousness.
What part of speech is Uriah Heepish?
Uriah Heepish is an adjective.

Words near Uriah Heepish in the dictionary

  1. uri
  2. Uriah
  3. Uriah Heep
  4. Uriah Heeped
  5. Uriah Heeping
  6. Uriah Heepish
  7. Uriah Heepishly
  8. Uriah Heepishness
  9. Uriah Heeps
  10. urial
  11. urials

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Uriah 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: “Uriah Heepish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/uriah_heepish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.