(v. i.) To smile in a silly, affected, or conceited manner.
(v. i.) To glimmer; to twinkle.
(n.) A constrained, self-conscious smile; an affected, silly smile; a smirk.
Example Sentences:
(1) After months of simpering, “some old-fashioned ass-kicking” may be back on the cards.
(2) Her electric blue suit at the swearing-in ceremony was too bright for some and too tight for others – "but she's so beautiful," declared the critic in La Repubblica, simultaneously strict and simpering, "that she's instantly forgiven".
(3) He tossed Shakespeare into a modern-day, thinly veiled Miami in the electrifying Romeo + Juliet and sent Nicole Kidman wafting, purring and simpering through bohemian Paris in Moulin Rouge!
(4) She has a simpering second serve and is primarily known for her defensive impenetrability.
(5) The skeptics include Adrian Simper, the strategy director of the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which will be among those organizations deciding whether to back the PRISM plan.
(6) While the TV audience has criticised Fernandez-Versini’s simpering, and complained that Cowell has lost his nasty edge, Brown has proved herself the most watchable judge.
(7) "From community projects to a share of the profits, renewable energy to Fairtrade products, the Co-operative believe that when the benefits are passed around it's good for everyone," went the simpering script.
(8) Ruskin, played by Joshua McGuire, is a simpering Blackadderish caricature of an art intellectual: a lisping, red-headed, salon fop.
(9) GEH says Simper is mistaken and that the technology is largely proven.
(10) I couldn’t possibly second-guess the NAO report,” he simpered.
(11) No one expects honourable conduct from an immoral institution, whose lecturers simpered like besotted lovers at Muammar Muhammad Gaddafi , while their masters pocketed Libyan money.
(12) Domhnall Gleeson Gleeson, who played a Weasley in Harry Potter and a simpering bandit in the Coen brothers' True Grit, may be more recognizable to audiences.
(13) "The Sweet Danish Life: Copenhagen: Cool, Creative, Carefree," simpered National Geographic; "The Nordic Countries: The Next Supermodel" , boomed the Economist; "Copenhagen really is wonderful for so many reasons," gushed the Guardian.
(14) In one of the wonderful Reith lectures Perry gave last year , he concluded that today’s art establishment is something of a dictatorship, simpering about the avant garde, snobbish towards the middle ground.
(15) Meryl Streep is nominated for her simpering turn in the dreadful Hope Springs and Nicole Kidman for her high-camp car-crash in The Paperboy (the centrepiece of which involves her urinating over an insensible Zac Efron ).
(16) In the wake of repeated criticism by conservative politicians and the publication of a paper documenting numerous allegations of “ABC bias” by the extreme libertarian think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, the veteran media reporter Errol Simper once wrote that the ABC was being subjected to “the most persistent orchestrated campaign of vilification” in its history.
(17) The simpering British politicians cower before him, but Gandolfini's General Miller is just about the only character who could feasibly face him down, and their brief encounter is one of the movie's highlights.
(18) Simper is also concerned that the plutonium metal, once prepared for the reactor, would be even more vulnerable to theft for making bombs than the powdered oxide.
(19) Says Paul Simper, a journalist who worked with her extensively in the 1980s: "None of the other British solo women from Sade's time, such as Alison Moyet or Carmel, made any impact in the US at all.
(20) She already looks to have what it takes to win, but as the series rolls on over the coming weeks, I hope that she won't fall prey to those who would all too readily accuse her of flirting, sulking, batting her eyelids or simpering her way to the top.
Smirk
Definition:
(v. i.) To smile in an affected or conceited manner; to smile with affected complaisance; to simper.
(n.) A forced or affected smile; a simper.
(a.) Nice,; smart; spruce; affected; simpering.
Example Sentences:
(1) 5.14pm GMT Alan Pardew speaks ... With a smirk playing around his chops in a charm offensive on Sky Sports, he says he ‘massively regrets” sticking the hid on Hull City midfielder David Meyler and says he’ll be sitting down for matches in the future.
(2) If Kyrgios cares about his career – and sometimes he is so blase about his success, wealth and celebrity he professes to hate tennis – the hip young dude from Canberra who smirks when he should be smiling, who plainly is struggling with fame, needs to understand he is not the only clown in town.
(3) He often seems mysteriously amused, cocking an eyebrow and pulling a coy, wouldn’t-you-like-to-know smirk, but he likes to laugh out loud, too.
(4) Asked about his repeated gestures, grins and smirks towards the victims, she said it brought back memories of seeing him at Srebrenica.
(5) "Now we know our fortresses are secure," says their president, Tim Farron, a smirk of triumph in his voice, "we can collect 25 or 30 more Tory seats."
(6) They get angry at the justice minister’s smirk as he refutes “any security gap” when in fact the bombs exploded close to an interior ministry building and the headquarters of the Turkish national intelligence organisations.
(7) He has a way of holding a half-smile on his face while listening to his opponent that appears perilously close to a smirk.
(8) It can take all of a parent's ingenuity to get though a shopping trip without unwillingly picking up a tin of Barbie spaghetti shapes, a box of cereal with Lightning McQueen smirking from the front, or a bag of fruit chews with a catchy jingle.
(9) His bastard Ramsay has shown his colors (whatever color is for sadism), but Roose – who abstains from alcohol and only offers a smirk at Lady Stark here, a frown with Jaime Lannister there – is still a cypher.
(10) Bidisha : Two sexist remarks and one misogynist one At a major literary festival, before an event about military fiction, a posh famous English author smirked to me, "What's the difference between a woman and a piece of toast?
(11) I saw the smirk, too, when I went on the road with Prince and the Revolution two years later, accompanying the 1999 tour on several dates through the Midwest.
(12) They might have been even more shaken had they known that the men in casual clothes handing them these strange, badly set little pamphlets – with their funereal black borders and another death’s head leering at them inside next to the smirking wish “Good luck” – were members of New York’s police forces.
(13) With such knowledge comes a predictable illusion of power, though this is all too regularly punctured by the indignity of being kicked out of shiny receptions and told to use an entrance more befitting of our lowly status – or of having my pronunciation of “Southwark Street” incorrectly corrected by a receptionist, who gives her colleague a sidelong smirk, commiserating over my supposed ignorance.
(14) When I look at their faces, I see nothing but bravado, whether it’s Beyoncé’s stoicism, Kerry Washington’s smirk or Serena’s confidence.
(15) The camera cuts to Groves in the audience, who is smirking at Froch's words.
(16) Leonardo DiCaprio plays Calvin Candie, the sadistic plantation owner, smirking into the zoom lens.
(17) A political debate that revolves around sniggering at women’s body parts and smirks about gay hairdressers?
(18) On another occasion, as the judge addressed Mladic about the procedure, the defendant appeared to switch off and turned to the victims again, smirking and nodding at them.
(19) On Thursday, she was pictured semi-naked on the cover of the Daily Star, a cut out of the heads of presenters Ant and Dec over each of her breasts, above a smirking caption claiming that "Naughty Nadine Dorries has boobed again!"
(20) The Catholic father in Ken Loach's Jimmy's Hall is just the most implacable enemy of nice-as-pie communists showing everyone a good time; the village imam in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep is an ingratiating, smirking creep; and the local rev in The Homesman (as played by John Lithgow) is definitely a weasel, rather too obviously grateful not to have to transport three traumatised frontierwomen back east.