What's the difference between grovel and obsequious?

Grovel


Definition:

  • (adv.) To creep on the earth, or with the face to the ground; to lie prone, or move uneasily with the body prostrate on the earth; to lie fiat on one's belly, expressive of abjectness; to crawl.
  • (adv.) To tend toward, or delight in, what is sensual or base; to be low, abject, or mean.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Lord Young , the prime minister's enterprise adviser, was forced to issue a grovelling apology last night after he claimed most Britons "had never had it so good during this so called recession".
  • (2) And instead of celebrating bumper peak viewing figures of more than 20m for the England match, ITV was instead having to issue a grovelling apology.
  • (3) If they want me to get down and grovel on the floor; no, never.
  • (4) I was showing a person groveling to take back a statement made long ago!
  • (5) This week his previous grovelling before communist China over steel tariffs has returned to haunt him.
  • (6) From 1969 to 1985 he also wrote the Grovel gossip column in Private Eye, whose then editor, Richard Ingrams, dubbed him the Greatest Living Englishman despite, or because of, more writs.
  • (7) It didn't happen and, as Simon Jenkins put it , "Cameron could hardly have grovelled lower.
  • (8) "With her blonde hair and her ability to ask the most grovelling questions, she is rapidly becoming the female Fabricant – or at least Fabricant Mark I, before he stopped crawling and became an elder statesman."
  • (9) There's even a slot called Friday Boss, in which the programme's usual rules of engagement are set aside and its reporters grovel before the corporate idol.
  • (10) Bashir immediately erupted in a ball of fiery rage, cutting Hardin off, refusing to let him speak, repeatedly demanding an apology for this grievous assault on the integrity of a military man, and then – when Hardin failed sufficiently to grovel for the crime of speaking ill of Gen Dempsey – Bashir kicked Hardin off the show by abruptly ending the interview.
  • (11) The Countess of Wessex, 2001 Sophie Wessex reportedly had to write grovelling apologies to Prince Charles, Tony Blair and William Hague after Mahmood lured her into making highly embarrassing comments about them.
  • (12) Some MPs are saying the better solution would be to fine them, rather than to require them to grovel in front of the highest court in the land.
  • (13) Organisers of a conference celebrating the best and brightest businesspeople in the north of England have issued a grovelling apology over lack of female representation.
  • (14) HSBC has made mistakes in the past, and for them I am very sorry,” his successor Douglas Flint, the former long-serving finance director, told shareholders in July 2012: “Candidly, in particular areas we fell short of the standards that I, my colleagues, our regulators, customers, and investors expect.” A grovel was the only position Flint could adopt.
  • (15) The response from architects grovelling for the fame of a tower in their CVs is that they are "only obeying orders" from clients, and that tall buildings are "the future".
  • (16) For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him “groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad.
  • (17) There, in all its hilarious glory, is the joke by Jimmy Carr that was transmitted on Loose Ends at the weekend, for the broadcast of which the BBC has issued a grovelling apology.
  • (18) It sees him mock his own grovelling appearance on BBC Newsnight in November, when he admitted that Dapper Laughs was “a type of comedy that I should not have been doing”.
  • (19) Michael Richards Made a grovelling apology over his 2006 rant in which he used the N-word, paradoxically on David Letterman's show.
  • (20) It said the intent was to demonstrate a resolute stand with places that share America's values – a hint at the Republican contender's claim that Obama has let down Washington's friends abroad while offering grovelling apologies to its enemies.

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.