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Meanings of fawning in English

Attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery.

Related terms
Synonyms
Examples for "obsequious"
Examples for "obsequious"
1
In a few minutes the obsequious clerk came blustering down the hall:
Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in t...
2
To someone with a higher Party position, Li can be so obsequious.
Enigma of China
3
I assented and Agathemer came in, as smiling and obsequious as always.
Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of ...
4
He is wide-awake and obsequious enough, however, at backsheesh-time in the morning.
Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume II / From Teheran To Yoko...
5
The Emîr laughed again, which was the signal for an obsequious roar.
The Valley of the Kings
1
His age may have been fifty; his air was mean and sycophantic.
The Strolling Saint; being the confessions of the high and might...
2
As scheming and sycophantic as any royal family in Adarlan, she supposed.
Heir of Fire
3
The men who praised Cesare, the historian tells us, were sycophantic courtiers.
The Life of Cesare Borgia
4
She's amazing, considering the sickly, sycophantic atmosphere she's been brought up in.
The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig: A Novel
5
Twenty years ago this prize would have been sycophantic but maybe more justified.
Reuters
1
But the crawling, bootlicking carpenter, Jacob Engstrand, is changed into a respectable, guileless man with an income.
The Art of the Moving Picture
2
Dorotea could have her bootlicking faction in the Imperial Palace; Valya intended to rejoin Raquella, as a Reverend Mother.
Mentats of Dune
3
He looked at Tigerman, to be sure this display of bootlicking was noted, and added, The police are convinced Daniels killed himself.
Man in the Middle
Usage of fawning in English
1
No such special pleading or fawning re-enactment is necessary: that isn't fidelity.
The Guardian
2
He accused them of fawning on the rich and despising the poor.
A History of the Moravian Church
3
I prefer you as the bulldog, rather than as the fawning cur.
The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2)
4
His fawning manners and insinuating language varied according to the people addressed.
Derues / Celebrated Crimes
5
His manner vacillated between a kind of hateful hostility and craven fawning.
The gunslinger
6
But that occasioned neither fawning nor a loss of his rigid self-control.
O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921
7
They shared a booth with Kiki and Bahni, Dante's fawning apartment mates.
Roast mortem
8
Gollum raised himself and began pawing at Frodo, fawning at his knees.
The two towers
9
Watch unseen had pattered up, and was rearing up, jumping and fawning.
The Herd Boy and His Hermit
10
If they came to him fawning, they but showed their lower natures.
Out of the Ashes
11
There is no greater bane to friendship than adulation, fawning, and flattery.
For Auld Lang Syne: A Book of Friendship
12
Oh, how I tired of that act, fawning over your Lord Machado.
Monster Hunter International
13
And the women, fawning and fatuous, are caught right between the eyes.
The new yorker
14
What do I care for them all, and my fawning upon them!
Crime and Punishment
15
Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation!
A Tale of Two Cities
16
Huyayy's fawning mask fell and his face twisted into an ugly sneer.
Mother of the believers: a novel of the birth of islam
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More collocations
Fawning through the time
Fawning across language varieties
United Kingdom
Common
United States of America
Common