adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective

1. 1
   Making a show of being morally better than others, especially hypocritically pious.

   "Near-synonyms: smug; see also Thesaurus:arrogant"

2. 2
   Holy, devout. archaic

Adjective

1. 1
   excessively or hypocritically pious wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

affectedairyarrogantauthoritarianbig-headedbiggity

Antonyms

All antonyms

humblemodest

Example

More examples

"They pretend to be sanctimonious but, in fact, they are hypocrite and despicable."

Etymology

From sanctimony + -ous.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.