WordWealth: supercilious

su·per·cil·i·ous , adj.

Brooke's snooty remarks and consistently supercilious attitude alienated virtually all of her colleagues. —— Merriam-Webster

Geoffrey Norman, regarding your article about college football and the significance of football relative to the disastrous events of the past week, I appreciated it on the whole, but found it to be slightly supercilious in tone when talking about those who might have caused the atrocities. We should be angry with them and we should demand that payment be made for the evil done, but believing we are better than they are will not only not help in achieving those goals, but it will also prove to be incorrect. —— Jan Perkins in 'Readers' Reactions to Terrorist Attacks'; ESPN

"This is an academic discussion, however," said the clerk. "You've been appointed. I cant unappoint you. Only the judge can do that. Do you know Judge Stang?" Legends and war stories came immediately to Watson's mind. The time Judge Stang -- a cantankerous graduate of the Roy Bean school of jurisprudence -- ordered an attorney to put a bag over his client's head, because the judge was sick of the man's supercilious grin. The time he ordered a federal marshal to handcuff two squabbling attorneys together and lock them in a holding cell. The time he flew into a blind rage (later diagnosed as furor juridicus, a species of judicial seizure activity) and attacked thirty lawyers with the courtroom's iron flagpole because they were unable to settle EPA Superfund litigation after three years of discovery. —— Richard Doolin; 'Brainstorm'; CNN; May 7, 1998

Did you know? (Merriam-Webster)
Arrogant and disdainful types tend to raise an eyebrow at anything they consider beneath them. The original supercilious crowd must have shown that raised-eyebrow look often, because the adjective "supercilious" derives from "supercilium," Latin for "eyebrow." (We plucked our adjective and its meaning from the Latin adjective "superciliosus.") The term has been used in English to describe the censoriously overbearing since the late 1500s, when playwright Ben Jonson used it thus: "There are, no doubt, a supercilious race in the world who will esteeme all office, done you in this kind, an injurie."

Look at Thesaurus in depth

Back index, 'S'

Back index, 'R' | Next index, 'T'

> WordWealth, HOME