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Jane Eyre vocabulary
432 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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officious
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synonyms: superserviceable ???
► definition
Definition:offering help in trivial matters, often interfering
► uses
Uses:
his Lordship: Can I help you? This is not a public area you know.
Hyacinth: It's all right, I'm a friend of the family's. Her ladyship and I are old acquaintences, so it would be very unwise of you to start getting officious.
BBC. Keeping Up Appearances: Stately Home (1990)
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I used to take great delight in standing at a basket-maker’s, in the town where my father lived, to see them make their wicker-ware; and being, as boys usually are, very officious to help, and a great observer of the manner in which they worked those things,
Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe
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I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for I now drew near him again.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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I was a too-forward and self-assertive young woman with a mischievous penchant for officiousness and interference in other persons' affairs.
Jack London. The Iron Heel
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The world is full of officious, interfering busy-bodies. I should no more think of posting a letter that didn't belong to me, with an unused stamp on it, than I should think o' flying; but some meddle-some son of a ——a gun posted that letter and I got it.
W. W. Jacobs. Sailor's Knots
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Whether she was really an agent of the Thought Police, or simply an amateur spy actuated by of officiousness, hardly mattered. It was enough that she was watching him.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949)
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Interrupting himself in the middle of a critique of Homer in which he stressed his disapproval of the latter's officiousness and practice of meddling in things that were no business of his, [...]
P. G. Wodehouse. The Girl in Blue, p.152 (1971)
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the governess who attended Glumdalclitch very officiously lifted me up, to place me in the boat:
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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