Smarmy & Unctuous

smarmy







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a. (形容詞 adjective)



          1.    【英】【口】討好的;拍馬屁的;愛說奉承話的





The Columbia Guide to Standard American English



smarmy (adj.)   

 

This British word, which some Americans have adopted, means "unctuous (油腔滑調的) and insincere" and for now is best limited to Conversational levels and the Semiformal and Informal writing that imitates them. 



unctuous

–adjective

1. characterized by excessive piousness or moralistic fervor, esp. 

in 

an affected manner; excessively smooth, suave, or smug. 



2. of the nature of or characteristic of an unguent (藥膏,軟膏) or ointment; oily; greasy.

3. having an oily or soapy feel, as certain minerals.





　

This is a bedtime story? On Christmas Eve? But it serves as a preamble to what will follow some time later (50 years? These so-called people age well). 



Hellboy is working for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense alongside Liz and the Piscean Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), and under the supervision of the unctuous Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) who urges Hellboy to keep his work quiet. 



Undercover. Clandestine. Be discreet! Naturally, the first big fight scene ends up with Hellboy crashing out of a burning building and onto a police car.





　

The movie gets the booze-soaked, dusty-outback feel just right, and though it's hardly the most endearing picture ever made, it is a notable throwback to films of the 1970s that managed to be clever and calculated 



without the smarmy [pretension] of today's imitators. 





cringe 

sycophantic 

smarmy

that managed to be [clever] and [calculated] 

without the [smarmy] [pretension] of today's imitators.

fawn

He fawns [on] anyone in an influential [position].

a [fawn] is a very young deer.

a [faun] is a figure in Roman myth, half [man], half [goat], something like a [satyr]. (農牧之神,森林之神)



obsequious sycophantic

affront insult

effrontery shameless, impudence, presumption

He is polite to the point of [obsequiousness], 

not only to his church superiors, but even to the people he [torments].

I couldn’t forgive his [affront] to [of] his mother.

a sneak thief [ransacking] his own broken home for self-serving material

—and some critics at the Toronto film festival this year took Margot as a [scathing] matricidal [affront]. 

She then had the [effrontery] to ask a [favor]. 

Given the nature of the Inquisition, it seems unlikely such [effrontery] would have brought with [it] no consequences for Tomas and his retinue, as it does in the pic.

Tenuous