Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Behaving with sanctimony.
  • adjective Characterized by sanctimony.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Possessing sanctity; sacred; holy; saintly; religious.
  • Making a show of sanctity; affecting the appearance of sanctity.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Possessing sanctimony; holy; sacred; saintly.
  • adjective Making a show of sanctity; affecting saintliness; hypocritically devout or pious.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Making a show of being morally better than others, especially hypocritically pious.
  • adjective archaic Holy, devout.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective excessively or hypocritically pious

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sanctimony +‎ -ous

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Examples

  • You refer to the sanctimonious speech by Obama in Cairo two years ago.

    Letters: Obama's empty rhetoric on Israel 2011

  • Such criticism, though a bit sanctimonious, is reasonably well grounded: in the years since an ailing Yeltsin appointed him Russia's president, on December 31, 1999, Putin has in numerous ways tried to reassert Kremlin control over the country.

    The Accidental Autocrat 2005

  • Such criticism, though a bit sanctimonious, is reasonably well grounded: in the years since an ailing Yeltsin appointed him Russia's president, on December 31, 1999, Putin has in numerous ways tried to reassert Kremlin control over the country.

    The Accidental Autocrat 2005

  • The low point of self defeating activism came at a Radio City Music Hall fundraiser at which Chevy Chase said the president had the intellect of an "egg timer" John Mellencamp called Bush a "cheap thug" and Meryl Streep, in a performance that brings new meaning to the word sanctimonious, belittled the president's faith.

    Hullabaloo 2004

  • Lenz case so "sanctimonious" -- and dishonest -- as to suggest that he has never read the YouTube Terms of Service or discerned why a lawyer should not shriek that corporations "flout" their legal obligations by hiring third-parties who specialize in executing those legal obligations (p. 169-170).

    The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog Thomas Sydnor 2009

  • Then, when it’s proven once again, we sit back in sanctimonious self-righteousness shocked, absolutely shocked, about humankind’s venality.

    The Early Word: Obama Meets the Press - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com 2008

  • "Occasionally, for my benefit, she would recall sanctimonious preachers who would dismiss three quarters of the world's people as ignorant heathens doomed to spend the afterlife in eternal damnation ¾ and who in the next breath would insist that the earth and the heavens had been created in seven days, all geologic and astrophysical evidence to the contrary."

    Greg Barrett: Obama's speech bridges the Abrahamic faiths 2009

  • Occasionally, for my benefit, she would recall the sanctimonious preachers who would dismiss three-quarters of the world's people as ignorant heathens doomed to spend the afterlife in eternal damnation-and who in the same breath would insist that the earth and the heavens had been created in seven days, all geologic and astrophysical evidence to the contrary.

    The Audacity of Hope Obama, Barack 2006

  • "Barry isn't exactly what you would call sanctimonious," admitted the lawyer, with a dry smile.

    Viola Gwyn George Barr McCutcheon 1897

  • Before his marriage, Mr. Weld lodged, on principle, in a colored family in New York, even submitting to the inconvenience of having no heat in his room in winter, and bearing with singular charity and patience what Sarah calls the sanctimonious pride and Pharisaical aristocracy of his hosts.

    The Grimke Sisters Birney, Catherine H. 1885

Comments

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  • Oh, better far to live and die

    Under the brave black flag I fly,

    Than play a sanctimonious part,

    With a pirate head and a pirate heart.

    -- W.S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance

    August 20, 2008

  • "“I’m not a sanctimonious reader,” she says, “but I think there’s a cumulative beauty that can be achieved in books that you can’t really get on the internet.”"

    Source: What does it mean for a journalist today to be a Serious Reader?

    January 22, 2018