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Seeking a word with specific connotations of excessive, unashamed hypocrisy

English Language & Usage Asked by Matt2infinity on June 10, 2021

There is a word, which I’m sure exists, but which has eluded me for the best part of a year; it’s driven me so mad as to finally buckle and write this question in the hopes of drawing it out to the surface at last.

I’d tentatively define it as follows,

Of a person’s action or comment that is so hypocritical as to be unbelievable* that they’d try to take such a position. *(The word itself could be used here to describe the unbelievably hypocritical behaviour)

The idiom, "That’s rich (…coming from you)", sums up the sentiment, but if normal hypocritical behavior is rich, then the word I’m looking for is the mud-cake rich version of it.

Examples of situations where the word could be used to describe the (insert word) hypocritical nature,

  1. A dubious politician takes a hard stance against a respected senior public servant for allegedly making misleading comments.
  2. A social media influencer, who gains all their wealth from posting selfies to Instagram, has a go at society for its modern revelry in vanity.
  3. A wealthy individual, who pays substantial sums to accountants to maximise what benefits they receive from government initiatives, criticises people with disabilities who receive government welfare.
  4. One person, with extremely partisan political views, has a go at another person for their holding of their own extremely partisan political views.

An example sentence referencing an above scenario would be,

Their behaviour was utterly (insert word).

I’ve searched through various thesauruses without luck (merriam-webster, wordhippo, Macquarie, ect.). Two words that keep blocking my mind’s eye are incredulous and egregious; I believe the word in question likely sounds similar to these, therefore. However, these don’t fit as it has to relate specifically to the demonstration of excessive hypocrisy which is unpalatably rich.

2 Answers

How about

pharisaical: marked by hypocritical censorious self-righteousness (Merriam-Webster, online)

or

Pecksniffian
unctuously hypocritical (Merriam-Webster, online)?

Answered by ferjsoto42yahoocom on June 10, 2021

I'm wondering whether you're looking for shameless.

Answered by chiastic-security on June 10, 2021

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