Pecksniffian

American  

[pek-snif-ee-uhn] / pɛkˈsnɪf i ən /

Sometimes Pecksniffish

adjective

(often lowercase)

1. hypocritically and unctuously affecting benevolence or high moral principles.

---

Pecksniffian British  

/ pɛkˈsnɪfɪən /

adjective

1. affecting benevolence or high moral principles

---

Other Word Forms

• Pecksniffery noun
• Pecksniffianism noun
• Pecksniffism noun

Etymology

Origin of Pecksniffian

1850–55; named after Seth Pecksniff, character in Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel (1843) by Dickens; -ian

Example Sentences

With another season underway, suspend your Pecksniffian disapproval of the college football industry’s recent upheavals.

From Washington Post • Sep. 28, 2022

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Pickwickian, Bumbledom, Gradgrind, Podsnappery, Pecksniffian and the Artful Dodger have also escaped from the novels in which they first appeared to designate types of humanity.

From The Guardian • Dec. 2, 2017

Insults that are banned include "hypocrite", "blackguard" and "Pecksniffian cant", although only Jacob Rees-Mogg would use that last one these days.

From The Guardian • May 26, 2012

And even when I come to feel a final incompatibility of temper, Pecksniff was not so Pecksniffian as he has since become.

From Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays by Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)

We sometimes begin to move uneasily, as if something Pecksniffian had come into our presence, when we behold the twentieth century sitting in judgment on the manners and morals of the sixteenth century.

From Luther Examined and Reexamined A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation by Dau, W. H. T. (William Herman Theodore)