variants
or grovelling
as in fawning
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variants
or grovelling
1
2
as in crawling
to move slowly with the body close to the ground
because of their anatomy, bats can only grovel while moving along the ground
Synonyms & Similar Words
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of groveling
Matthias Matthijs, Foreign Affairs, 12 Dec. 2025
Continue reading … POINTING FINGERS – Former vice president accuses newspaper owners of 'groveling' to Trump in new book.
—FOXNews.com, 24 Sep. 2025
Verb
Rather than wait it out until January 2029, when magical thinking assumes the current transatlantic nightmare will come to an end, the EU needs to stop groveling and build greater sovereignty.
—Matthias Matthijs, Foreign Affairs, 12 Dec. 2025
Continue reading … POINTING FINGERS – Former vice president accuses newspaper owners of 'groveling' to Trump in new book.
—FOXNews.com, 24 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for groveling
Verb
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In it, her fellow students can be seen gasping, covering their faces and cringing.—
Catherine Santino,
PEOPLE,
30 Nov. 2025
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Encouraged to see Jones sorta respond, Mackie kept babbling on and on and on about his dad, unaware that everyone else in the room was cringing.—
Lisa Gutierrez,
Kansas City Star,
25 Oct. 2025
Verb
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The hand needed sufficient actuators to carry multiple objects while crawling, so joint torque limits, motor size, and 3D-printing constraints informed finger length, placement, and body geometry.—
Jijo Malayil,
Interesting Engineering,
21 Jan. 2026
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Videos from people on site show some passengers crawling out of windows to escape the wreckage, with carriages leaning at an angle.—
Joseph Wilson,
Los Angeles Times,
19 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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This approach is best exemplified by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who in June sent Trump an obsequious message praising his Middle Eastern diplomacy and lauding him for getting European countries to spend more on defense.—
Philip H. Gordon,
Foreign Affairs,
16 Dec. 2025
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The darkest thread, meanwhile, is the obsequious reverence for Epstein.—
Jessica Winter,
New Yorker,
17 Nov. 2025
Verb
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In this Tudor renovation, designer Barrie Benson combined 10 different textiles and prints in a single, orderly viewpoint without flinching.—
Zoe Gowen,
Southern Living,
29 Dec. 2025
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Human reflexes naturally protect the eyes; blinking, tearing, and flinching are some of the fastest human reflexes.—
Matthew Kayser,
USA Today,
8 Dec. 2025
Verb
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After a short detour, visitors will find some cute photo ops with the beavers and even more Pokémon creeping onto the main trail.—
Jordan Moreau,
Variety,
27 Jan. 2026
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Make the jump to cigarette jeans, also known (less charmingly) as stovepipe or boyfriend jeans, which are slowly but surely creeping into the fashion ecosystem.—
Jake Henry Smith,
Glamour,
27 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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After all, the deal — for a long-forsaken project, an action-comedy franchise starring two aging stars — underscores the servile fealty of new Paramount owners Larry and David Ellison amid their recent maneuvering to take control of TikTok and Warner Bros. Discovery (the latter seemingly futile).—
Gary Baum,
HollywoodReporter,
6 Dec. 2025
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Earlier this year, my colleague and bud Kelefa Sanneh suggested that music critics, as a lot, have gone soft—becoming submissive, overly agreeable, and, in some cases, nearly servile.—
Amanda Petrusich,
New Yorker,
1 Dec. 2025
Verb
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Shirts fans rush to buy after a championship win often begin in the Northern Colorado facility, sliding out of machines that can produce tens of thousands of T-shirts in a single day.—
Kelly Werthmann,
CBS News,
22 Jan. 2026
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The layout is comfortable and spacious—with sliding wood screens opening above the bed, connecting bathroom and living space and deepening the spatial experience further.—
Condé Nast,
Condé Nast Traveler,
22 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Another similar assumption is that since LLMs are tuned by AI makers to be sycophantic, the AI might computationally be gauging that the best way to make the user feel good is by going along with a delusion-crafting chat.—
Lance Eliot,
Forbes.com,
23 Jan. 2026
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Chatbots can often be sycophantic or agree with users’ viewpoints to a fault.—
Jared Perlo,
NBC news,
23 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Groveling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/groveling. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.
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