sanctimonious
adjective
G. B. Shaw
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How Shakespeare Used Sanctimonious
There’s nothing sacred about sanctimonious—at least not anymore. But in the early 1600s, the English adjective was still sometimes used to describe someone truly holy or pious, a sense at an important remove from today’s use describing someone who acts or behaves as though they are morally superior to others. (The now-obsolete “pious” sense recalls the meaning of the word’s Latin parent, sanctimonia, meaning “holiness” or “sanctity.”) Shakespeare used both the “holy” and “holier-than-thou” senses of sanctimonious in his work, referring in The Tempest to the “sanctimonious” (that is, “holy”) ceremonies of marriage, and in Measure for Measure to “the sanctimonious pirate that went to sea with the Ten Commandments but scraped one out of the table.” (Apparently, the pirate found the restriction on stealing inconvenient.)
Examples of sanctimonious in a Sentence
Ken Rosenthal, The Athletic, 6 Jan. 2025
If secular voters—or even those who think the place for expressions of faith are better served in a sanctuary than a Nashville convention hall—stopped rewarding such trolling, perhaps the sanctimonious performance art would stop.
—Philip Elliott, TIME, 20 June 2024
Senator Ernst, House Speaker Johnson and most of Congress are just a bunch of sanctimonious hypocrites who constantly point the finger at others while protecting their numerous golden eggs.
—Reader Commentary, Baltimore Sun, 12 Dec. 2024
More than family, my poor roommates at the time got the worst of my newfound sanctimonious zeal.
—David G. Allan, CNN, 27 Nov. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Sanctimonious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sanctimonious. Accessed 19 Jan. 2025.
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