Uriah Heepishness

English

Etymology

From Uriah Heepish +‎ -ness: From the Dickens character Uriah Heep, noted for his cloying humility, obsequiousness, and insincerity, the stereotypical yes man.

Noun

Uriah Heepishness (uncountable)

1. Fawning, cloying servility and obsequiousness.
   • 1887, Compton Reade, editor, Charles Reade, Dramatist, Novelist, Journalist: A Memoir Compiled Chiefly from His Literary Remains, volume 1, Chapman and Hall, page 122:

     To a man, the other candidates, imagining the College expected them to glorify Uriah Heepishness, proceeded on the old trite track to decry ambition as one of the devastating forces of humanity.

   • 1970 December 7, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “The City Politic: Scammon and Wattenberg vs. Lubell”, in New York Magazine, page 9:

     One must agree that the formulas they commend to Democratic politicians as a means of distancing themselves from student unrest and so on are crude; and the Uriah Heepishness of Hubert Humphrey's American Bar Association speech (apparently written by Wattenberg) was hardly attractive.

   • 2014, Daphne Athas, Entering Ephesus, Open Road Media, page 187:

     Deceit, lying, putting things over on people, bringing people down without their knowing it, stabbing in the back, hitting and running, obsequiousness, underhandedness, stealing, Uriah Heepishness.