Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Characterized by an obsequious or too ready compliance with the times, and especially with the will or humors of those in authority; obsequious; truckling.
- noun An acting conformably to times and seasons; now, usually, an obsequious compliance with the humors of men in power, which implies a surrender of one's independence, and sometimes of one's integrity.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Obsequiously complying with the spirit of the times, or the humors of those in power.
- noun An obsequious compliance with the spirit of the times, or the humors of those in power, which implies a surrender of one's independence, and sometimes of one's integrity.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A variant of
time-serving .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective taking immediate advantage, often unethically, of any circumstance of possible benefit
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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"Me and Sam's goin 'on' Midnight Pass 'ter-night, ain't we, Sam?" inquired a young "timeserving" fellow.
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[FN#94] Here the silence is of cowardice and the passage is a fling at the "timeserving" of the Olema, a favourite theme, like
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Political correctness is vast featherbedding trades union of pygmies, runts, and dullards, devoted to timeserving until their pension kicks in.
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Do you think he is doing any better than the 19 of his timeserving, unaccountable colleagues?
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While religious freedom had been secured, philosophy had become timid, official, and timeserving; retentive as FONTENELLE of the truths within its grasp, and fearful to give utterance to aught that might disturb the stillness of the temple, the lecture-room, or fashionable auditory.
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A melancholy and monitory lesson this, to all timeserving and temporising statesmen!
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We have learned to distrust the responses of their timeserving oracles, and to laugh at the ignorant pretensions of their literary artisans.
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A melancholy and monitory lesson this, to all timeserving and temporising statesmen!
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The antecedents of its principal members are those of timeserving politicians.
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They make their student-years but a pretext for a life of rough debauchery, from which they issue with a bought diploma; and, in many cases, satiated and disgusted with their own lives, they dwindle down into the timeserving reactionaries, the worst enemies of free development, because they themselves have abused in youth the little liberty they enjoyed.
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