Superciliousness Definition & Meaning

Choose the Right Synonym for supercilious

proud, arrogant, haughty, lordly, insolent, overbearing, supercilious, disdainful mean showing scorn for inferiors. proud may suggest an assumed superiority or loftiness. too proud to take charity arrogant implies a claiming for oneself of more consideration or importance than is warranted. a conceited and arrogant executive haughty suggests a consciousness of superior birth or position. a haughty aristocrat lordly implies pomposity or an arrogant display of power. a lordly condescension insolent implies contemptuous haughtiness. ignored by an insolent waiter overbearing suggests a tyrannical manner or an intolerable insolence. an overbearing supervisor supercilious implies a cool, patronizing haughtiness. an aloof and supercilious manner disdainful suggests a more active and openly scornful superciliousness. disdainful of their social inferiors

What is the origin of supercilious?

Arrogant and disdainful types tend to raise an eyebrow at anything they consider beneath them. The original supercilious crowd must have shown that raised-eyebrow look often, because the adjective supercilious derives from "supercilium," Latin for eyebrow. (We plucked our adjective and its meaning from the Latin adjective superciliosus.) "Supercilious" has been used to describe the censoriously overbearing since the late 1600s, but there was a time in the 1700s when it was also used as a synonym of another "supercilium" descendent, "superciliary" ("of, relating to, or adjoining the eyebrow"). Although the eyebrow sense of "supercilious" is now obsolete, it does help explain what ornithologist John Latham meant in 1782 when he described a "Supercilious K[ingfisher]" with a narrow orange stripe over its eyes.

Examples of supercilious in a Sentence

While Americans did congregate together at baseball games, … amusement parks, dance halls and arcades, tensions still roiled. The middle class may not have been as supercilious as the elites it replaced, but middle-class reformers were every bit as strident as those elites in condemning … working-class entertainments, and for the same reason: These entertainments constituted a challenge to the class's social control. — Neal Gabler, Life: The Movie, 1998 Cross' popular academic sleuth Kate Fansler returns, this time as a guest professor at the down-at-the-heels Schuyler Law School, where she has been asked to teach a course on literature and the law. Ardent feminist Kate soon finds that not only is Schuyler a bastion of intolerant, supercilious white males, but worse, any attempt by women or minorities to be heard is quickly quashed by the old-boy network. — Emily Melton, Booklist, 15 Dec. 1994 Jorgeson had a sharp tongue and was so supercilious in his remarks that I didn't know quite how seriously I should take this talk, but I enjoyed his humor and I did believe he had the sensibilities of an artist. — Thom Jones, New Yorker, 2 Dec. 1991 the supercilious art dealer rolled her eyes when we asked if she had anything for under $1,000

Recent Examples on the Web To advertise that confidence with an unselfconscious, open-mouthed, haplessly disarming smile — to resist the urge, in other words, to fake an air of supercilious self-importance — is the very best thing. — Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2022 From a supercilious smile to icy anger and back again, wonderfully easeful Charles Edwards is every inch the droll Vidal. — David Benedict, Variety, 10 Dec. 2021 Absent context, hand gestures perform a supercilious pantomime. — Los Angeles Times, 16 Aug. 2021 On the surface, Richardson appears unequivocally bold, toeing the line between confident and supercilious. — oregonlive, 19 June 2021 And the trustees who gleefully conspire in old age to gum up the keys of Petrie’s cherished typewriter seem unaltered from the supercilious, eager-to-humiliate childhood chums of long ago. — Washington Post, 16 Apr. 2021 Susan remembers Conway, a supercilious jerk, all too well. — New York Times, 2 Dec. 2020 This always induces some supercilious snickering among foreigners. — Gerard Baker, WSJ, 17 Jan. 2020 Service is immaculate, but friendly and never supercilious. — Tribune News Service, cleveland, 1 Dec. 2019 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'supercilious.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.