officious

English

Etymology

15th century, from Middle English offycyous, from Latin officiōsus (“kindly”), from officium (“service”).

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɪʃəs

Adjective

officious (comparative more officious, superlative most officious)

1. (obsolete) Obliging, attentive, eager to please.
   • 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter XI, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume III, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 206:

     Elizabeth's misery increased, at such unnecessary, such officious attention!

   • 1998 [1807 December], Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein, letter to Karl August von Hardenberg, in History of Political Thought, volume 19, Exeter: Imprint Academic, page 249:

     ‘It is essential that the nation become accustomed to managing its own affairs, so that it will emerge from this state of infancy in which an anxious and officious government attempts to keep the people’.

2. Offensively intrusive or interfering in offering advice and services.
   • 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168:

     The help tended to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome.

Usage notes

Most published dictionaries do not agree with the notion that this word means official, bureaucratic, or punctilious (“being a stickler for formalities”) in modern use. It is not rare to encounter some instances of the word's use where the writer seems to have meant something like that. In choosing one's own words, it is worth knowing that some readers may view such use as catachrestic.

Derived terms

• inofficious
• officious intermeddler
• officiously
• officiousness
• overofficious

Related terms

English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₃ep- (0 c, 27 e)

Translations

(obsolete in English) eager to please

• Dutch: bereidwillig (nl), overijverig (nl)
• German: übereifrig, dienstfertig, beflissen (de), dienstgeflissen, dienstbeflissen (de), bemüht (de)
• Swedish: fjäskig (sv)

offensively intrusive or interfering

• Bulgarian: натрапчив (bg) (natrapčiv), досаден (bg) (dosaden)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 多管闲事的 (zh)

• Dutch: opdringerig (nl)
• Finnish: virkaintoinen (fi), tungetteleva (fi)
• German: aufdringlich (de), wichtigmacherisch
• Irish: anchúramach
• Maori: whakapōrearea, whawhewhawhe
• Norwegian: offisiøs (no)
• Polish: nadgorliwy (pl)
• Russian: назо́йливый (ru) (nazójlivyj), навя́зчивый (ru) (navjázčivyj)
• Spanish: entrometido (es), inoportuno (es), oficioso (es)
• Swedish: beskäftig (sv)