Catch-22 vocabulary

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simper

help with notes notes: {n}

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Definition:
1. To smile in a silly, affected, or conceited manner.
2. To glimmer; to twinkle. [Obs.]
3. A constrained, self-conscious smile; an affected, silly smile; a smirk.

Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
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v.i. to smile in a silly, affected manner.
n. a silly or affected smile.

Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (1908)

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Uses:
Was kinder to his father than my daughters
Got ’tween the lawful sheets.
To’t, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.
Behold yond simp’ring dame,
Whose face between her forks presages snow;

William Shakespeare. King Lear
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With a made countenance about her mouth, between simpering and smiling.

Sir Phillip Sidney.
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The conscious simper, and the jealous leer.

Alexander Pope.
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"Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?" she added, glancing with a simper at Kitty.

Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett)
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Kitty simpered and smiled, and hoped her turn was coming soon.

Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (1813)
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"I think, my lord," the Q.C. suggested with a sympathetic simper, "your lordship's too ill to open the court to-day. Perhaps the proceedings had better be adjourned for the present."

Grant Allen. What's Bred in the Bone
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"Now, Chrono—" she said simperingly, "it’s only a game, you know."

Kurt Vonnegut. The Sirens of Titan (1959)
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