Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To smile in a silly, self-conscious, often coy manner.
- intransitive verb To utter or express with a silly, self-conscious, often coy smile.
- noun A silly, self-conscious, often coy smile.
from The Century Dictionary.
- An obsolete or dialectal variant of
simmer . - noun An affected, conscious smile; a smirk.
- To smile in an affected, silly manner; smirk.
- To twinkle; glimmer.
- Synonyms Simper and Smirk both express smiling; the primary idea of the first is silliness or simplicity; that of the second is affectation or conceit. The simplicity in simpering may be affected; the affectation in smirking may be of softness or of kindness.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A constrained, self-conscious smile; an affected, silly smile; a smirk.
- intransitive verb To smile in a silly, affected, or conceited manner.
- intransitive verb obsolete To glimmer; to twinkle.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb intransitive To
smile in afoolish ,frivolous ,self-conscious ,coy , orsmug manner. - noun A foolish, frivolous, self-conscious, or
affected smile; asmirk .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a silly self-conscious smile
- verb smile affectedly or derisively
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In the morning, before I got up, Strap came into my chamber, and, finding me awake, hemmed several times, scratched his head, cast his eyes upon the ground, and, with a very foolish kind of simper upon his face gave me to understand he had something to communicate.
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There is nothing, for the conversation has been as lead, but the smile does not subside; it only passes through the endless variations that succeed each other from the inane grin to the affected simper which is meant to be tender.
Greifenstein 1881
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In the morning, before I got up, Strap came into my chamber, and, finding me awake, hemmed several times, scratched his head, cast his eyes upon the ground, and, with a very foolish kind of simper upon his face gave me to understand he had something to communicate.
The Adventures of Roderick Random Tobias George Smollett 1746
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But I, and most right-thinking people, don't need the enjoyment of our lives intruded on by your constant, hectoring simper.
Archive 2009-02-01 Dungeekin 2009
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Is this what women are doing when they simper over bad boys – turning the female talent for self-loathing into an everyday hell for the women who actually end up dealing with them?
Idolising bad boys makes Charlies of us all | Barbara Ellen 2011
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Still, Pan Am and even the Playboy Club look like feminist manifestos in comparison with the new Charlie's Angels remake, which pulls off the improbable trick of apparently requiring its cast to wear less and simper more than they did the first time round.
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On the other, she has a tendency to simper that can be a little grating.
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But I, and most right-thinking people, don't need the enjoyment of our lives intruded on by your constant, hectoring simper.
A Note to the Nanny State Dungeekin 2009
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On the other, she has a tendency to simper that can be a little grating.
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Christine O'Donnell and witchcraft, the brain-crushing demagoguery in August about the proposed mosque in Manhattan? it needs someone like Stewart or Colbert to step in and introduce perspective, and to expose what's happening for the nuttiness it is, while Democrats simper in the corner in fear of Fox News.
Jon Stewart still calls out to sensible America. Fox won't Michael Tomasky 2010
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