What's the difference between cower and obsequious?

Cower


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To stoop by bending the knees; to crouch; to squat; hence, to quail; to sink through fear.
  • (v. t.) To cherish with care.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Stephen Fisher, one of the archaeologists recording the site, says digging the trenches would also have been training for the men, who would soon have to do it for real, and the little slit trenches scattered across the site, just big enough for one man to cower in, might represent their first efforts.
  • (2) In the cities worst hit by street fighting, such as Aden, civilians are either cowering at home to avoid sniper fire and bombardment or have joined the more than half million Yemenis forced out of their houses and now looking for food and shelter.
  • (3) Reporters were initially told that one of Bin Laden's wives was killed while he was using her as a human shield, prompting headlines such as "Osama bin Laden killed cowering behind his 'human shield' wife ".
  • (4) The trial on Friday heard from defence ballistics expert Tom Wolmarans who testified that it was impossible to be certain how Steenkamp fell when she was hit by bullets, challenging the prosecution's implication that she might have been cowering in fear.
  • (5) The special constable found his driver, cowered behind her shield and watched a brick fly through the air, strike the ground and split in two.
  • (6) Infantile delivery also frequently serves to take the curse off self-publicity; sleight of hand for those who find "my programme is on BBC2 tonight" too presumptuous and exposing, and prefer to cower behind the low-status imbecility of "I done rote a fingy for da tellybox!"
  • (7) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ed Miliband challenges David Cameron to name a date for a TV debate The Labour leader renewed his call to Cameron to face him in the one-on-one debate proposed by broadcasters on 30 April, saying that the prime minister was “cowering from the public”.
  • (8) The chilling claim that we are all surrounded by an invisible peril was the prelude to evoking an evil that we had long thought was behind us, with May declaring: "It is walking our streets, supplying shops and supermarkets, working in fields, factories or nail bars, trapped in brothels or cowering behind the curtains in an ordinary street: slavery."
  • (9) The Labour party have been hiding in the shadows and cowering in fear.
  • (10) The Prison Service launched an investigation after footage filmed in Forest Bank showed an inmate, who appeared to be hallucinating because of the effect of drugs, writhing on a bed in his cell and cowering in fear at the sight of an apple.
  • (11) Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian I don't drink as a rule, but one proud little abode cowering in the shadow of the monstrosity that is the Beetham Tower is a lovely little old Manchester boozer.
  • (12) Mangena said Steenkamp was shot in the right hip and was cowering when she was hit in the head.
  • (13) State radio went dead, and fearful residents cowered in their homes.
  • (14) He is cowering in the tradition of silence that he inherited,” said Jason Tompkins, an organizer with Black Lives Matter of Chicago.
  • (15) Furthermore, reading through his old interviews, it seems this is very much the new, improved, media-friendly Richard Ayoade: one journalist who encountered him just as the IT Crowd broke found him "cowering" behind his glasses and complaining that he was "terrible at talking, with words".
  • (16) Survivors fled into three eastern enclaves where the Bosnian republican army had resisted: Goražde, Žepa and Srebrenica, their populations swelled by displaced deportees, cowering, bombarded relentlessly and largely cut off from supplies of food and medicine.
  • (17) An age group from 30 to 78 years has been cowered with an average age of 59.
  • (18) The journey has caused the burger to steam into greyness, glueing itself to its soggy bun.The £32 steak appears, cowering in the corner of its container like a whipped puppy.
  • (19) Valentina, a 61-year-old market trader in Ilovaysk, said she had spent 23 days cowering in a cellar with several dozen others, and had been threatened by Ukrainian volunteer battalions who tried to use her and others as human shields and stole mobile phones and other property.
  • (20) For the left upper limb, the site of amputation was at the level of the Cower third of the forearm.

Obsequious


Definition:

  • (a.) Promptly obedient, or submissive, to the will of another; compliant; yielding to the desires of another; devoted.
  • (a.) Servilely or meanly attentive; compliant to excess; cringing; fawning; as, obsequious flatterer, parasite.
  • (a.) Of or pertaining to obsequies; funereal.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Labour too had "sort of fallen to their knees obsequiously towards very powerful vested interests in the media", he said.
  • (2) Families of China's 'disappeared' say country is a place of fear and panic Read more “It is so obsequious, it is just nauseating,” said Howie.
  • (3) This week I saw a hilarious clip of Trump beckoning Farage out of a crowd – a bit like Courteney Cox in the Dancing in the Dark video – and Farage telling him obsequiously he was “handing over the mantle”.
  • (4) In a piece for Salon , Greenwald said the blog’s favorable – “obsequious” was the word he used – coverage of justices was a way for Goldstein to curry favor for when he would argue before the court.
  • (5) They're still queuing up to take a bow, albeit less obsequiously than before.
  • (6) After King Phil repaid Labour for its obsequiousness by publicly backing the Tories in 2010, the new PM asked him to review government spending and procurement.
  • (7) Not for him the tiny calibrations of the text or the obsequious notes to his masters.
  • (8) There are people who have been absolute shits for the last 20 years who have suddenly become embarrassingly friendly and obsequious.
  • (9) And in the middle of it were the two Matthews, obsequiously yucking it up like a grotesque Fluck and Law parody of the coddled one-percent.
  • (10) The minister’s article reads like an obsequious sales pitch, but in that sense it is fairly consistent with the UK government’s approach to the Gulf states.
  • (11) Observing this process through the prism of private equity, there is a certain obsequiousness on behalf of politicians behind closed doors.
  • (12) First, nobly casting aside obsequious talk of titles following his recent appointment as president of the Queen's Bench Division, Leveson willingly confirmed that he was his old self: "I was always Brian Leveson."
  • (13) For a decade Britain has been obsequious towards China .
  • (14) Thus the same administration that resisted judicial disclosure pursuant to transparency laws leaked bits and pieces about the mission (always favorable to the president) to their favorite media message-carriers ; secretly met with and shoveled information to big Hollywood filmmakers planning a pre-election release of a film about the Bin Laden raid (now pushed back until December in the wake of the ensuing controversy, though the already-released film trailer – see below – will soon be inundating the nation); and then sat down with one of America's most obsequious, military-revering news anchors for an hour-long prime-time special that spoke of the raid with predictable awe but asked none of the hard questions about these lingering issues.
  • (15) Obsequiousness tends not to make good pictures of politicians – unless you happen to be Thomas Gainsborough or George Romney – and in a sense photographers are that unusual thing for them, a person just getting on with doing their job just as they might with anybody else.
  • (16) The all-too-familiar axis that has enabled massive civil liberties assaults by the Obama administration - blindly partisan progressive media outlets and particularly obsequious self-styled neutral journalists - instantly sprung into action here and wasted no time jumping to the defense of the US government.
  • (17) Most people, let alone journalists, would be far too embarrassed to admit they harbor such subservient, obsequious sentiments.
  • (18) That same article quoted the supremely obsequious former Obama adviser Harold Koh as hailing torture advocate and serial deceiver John Brennan as "a person of genuine moral rectitude" who ensures that the "kill list" is accompanied by moral struggle: "It's as though you had a priest with extremely strong moral values who was suddenly charged with leading a war," Koh said.
  • (19) Here's the White House list of who's meeting with the president: • Ajay Banga, MasterCard • Steve Bennett, Symantec • Wes Bush, Northrop Grumman • Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin • Renee James, Intel • Brian Moynihan, Bank of America • Joe Rigby, Pepco Holdings • Charlie Scharf, Visa 3.31pm GMT With exceptions , congressional interrogation of intelligence officials in hearings since the Snowden revelations in June has been obsequious conspiratorial deeply collegial .
  • (20) Tyranny becomes docile and subservient, and a soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine waiter.