The AI-powered English dictionary
comparative more simpering, superlative most simpering
Affected, smug, and supercilious. quotations examples
Why, look at him—look at this simpering self-righteous mug!
1892, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXI, in The American Claimant, New York, N.Y.: Charles L[uther] Webster & Co., page 214
I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure.
1926, Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
I had high hopes when I moved to Spyglass, but simpering gossip on celebrity parties seems to be the closest I've gotten so far to Dad's vocation.
2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, London: Hodder and Stoughton
That sounds almost simpering. I hate sounding simpering, and over a trifling increase of four coppers on a gold, I definitely do not wish to sound simpering.
2015, L. E. Modesitt, Jr, Madness in Solidar
present participle and gerund of simper examples
plural simperings
The act of one who simpers. quotations examples
Well, but Polly attended, as I said; and there were strange simperings, and bowing, and courtesying, between them; the honest gentleman seeming not to know how to let his mistress wait upon him […]
1740, Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded