OFFICIOUSLY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does officiously mean? 

• OFFICIOUSLY (adverb)
  The adverb OFFICIOUSLY has 1 sense:

1. in an officious manner

  Familiarity information: OFFICIOUSLY used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OFFICIOUSLY (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In an officious manner

Context example:

nothing so fatal as to strive too officiously for an abstract quality like beauty

Pertainym:

officious (intrusive in a meddling or offensive manner)

 Context examples 

In this exercise I once met an accident, which had like to have cost me my life; for, one of the pages having put my boat into the trough, the governess who attended Glumdalclitch very officiously lifted me up, to place me in the boat: but I happened to slip through her fingers, and should infallibly have fallen down forty feet upon the floor, if, by the luckiest chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a corking-pin that stuck in the good gentlewoman’s stomacher; the head of the pin passing between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus I was held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my relief.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Before her removing from Norland, Elinor had painted a very pretty pair of screens for her sister-in-law, which being now just mounted and brought home, ornamented her present drawing room; and these screens, catching the eye of John Dashwood on his following the other gentlemen into the room, were officiously handed by him to Colonel Brandon for his admiration.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)