What's the difference between obsequious and slavish?

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.

Slavish


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to slaves; such as becomes or befits a slave; servile; excessively laborious; as, a slavish life; a slavish dependance on the great.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) To organise society as an individualistic war of one against another was barbaric, while the other models, slavishly following the rules of one religion or one supreme leader, denied freedom.
  • (2) "But it's good for our relationship and for world affairs that the United Kingdom is in support so far of the major foreign policy initiatives of the Obama administration, not in any slavish way, but we are in support of them," Hague said.
  • (3) But one has a right to demand what purpose it fulfils," wrote the Times's critic, who felt that Bond's "blockishly naturalistic piece, full of dead domestic longueurs and slavishly literal bawdry", would "supply valuable ammunition to those who attack modern drama as half-baked, gratuitously violent and squalid".
  • (4) Apart from a few diehards, it will be hard to mourn the defeat in 2010 of a political party that lost its moral bearings in its bid to woo middle England, slavishly reflecting back what it believed this narrow constituency wanted to hear.
  • (5) Clegg told the Foreign Correspondents' Association in London last month: "I think it's sometimes rather embarrassing the way Conservative and Labour politicians talk in this kind of slavish way about the 'special relationship'.
  • (6) There is an inability to break with the slavish, neoliberal worship of that abstract totem, the national economy.
  • (7) There are better comparisons for a “slavishly dependent” relationship.
  • (8) The time is ripe for nursing actively to take advantage of the capacities and potentials of these tools, which slavishly and untiringly carry out tasks and relay information that can contribute to the well-being of patients and the advancement of nursing.
  • (9) He's not a slavish disciple of markets, or small government (although fiscal circumstances and periodic stiffening from economic dries within the Liberal party may make him something of a latterday convert on this score at least).
  • (10) And the Nauru files unveil how conditions in the camps are clinically euphemised for the outside world: critical incidents, in which refugees have attempted to kill themselves, or are raped or assaulted, are downgraded to the classifications “major” or “minor”, ensuring that Wilson – the security subcontractor on the island – won’t be fined for failing to report them in time; doctors’ orders that someone be moved for urgent medical treatment are overruled by a department slavishly determined to uphold a policy, regardless of medical consequence.
  • (11) They're not slavish to the lyrics rulebook, so you'll never catch me singing 'Oh baby, baby yeah'.
  • (12) One wonders why only 20% of Americans believe President Barack Obama is a Muslim , considering the overwhelming evidence conclusively proving his slavish allegiance to Islam and utter disregard for Christianity.
  • (13) They despised Bond's characters, his "slavishly literal bawdry", the lack of artistry in his writing.
  • (14) He went on: I think it's sometimes rather embarrassing the way Conservative and Labour politicians talk in this kind of slavish way about the special relationship.
  • (15) "And adidas, Nike, Puma etc slavishly going along with it.
  • (16) As a veteran critic of the academy model, I can’t deny a smidgeon of satisfaction at hearing concerns about centralisation, patchy quality, loss of freedom, reduction in parent choice and the anti-democratic nature of coercion coming from the mouths of people who have slavishly supported this wrong-headed policy for the past 10 years.
  • (17) But the young players who have followed his instructions so slavishly – so much so that one or two commentators compared BVB to a cult with Klopp as the spiritual leader – are now a little older, perhaps a little wiser but maybe a little slower as well.
  • (18) Emmet, meanwhile, must learn to stop slavishly following "the instructions", improvise and think the unthinkable.
  • (19) Of course, some fear a slavishly pro-SNP daily paper will be a McPravda – reprinting SNP press releases, praising every aspect of Scottish government policy and turning off open-minded readers.
  • (20) The monument hails him as “the scourge of corrupt and slavish times, full of vice and tyrants”.

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