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Bossy vs Submissive - What's the difference?

bossy | submissive |

As adjectives the difference between bossy and submissive

is that bossy is tending to give orders to others, especially when unwarranted; domineering while submissive is meekly obedient or passive.

As nouns the difference between bossy and submissive

is that bossy is a cow or calf while submissive is one who submits.

bossy

English

Etymology 1

Adjective

(er)
  • Tending to give orders to others, especially when unwarranted; domineering.
    • Synonyms
    * dictatorial, authoritarian, commanding, tyrannical, demanding, inflexible * see also

    Etymology 2

    Diminutive of dialectal English boss, as used in the term ).

    Noun

    (bossies)
  • (US, informal, dated) A cow or calf.
  • * about 1900 , O. Henry,
    • A week before, while riding the prairies, Raidler had come upon a sick and weakling calf deserted and bawling. Without dismounting he had reached and slung the distressed bossy across his saddle, and dropped it at the ranch for the boys to attend to.

    Etymology 3

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Ornamented with bosses; studded.
    • ----

    submissive

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • one who submits

    • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Meekly obedient or passive.
  • * 1756 , Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke , G. Bell & sons, page 314:
    • The powerful managers for government were not sufficiently submissive to the pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favour, sometimes from a confidence in their own strength natural and acquired; sometimes from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the country, which gave them a consideration independent of the court.
  • * 1913 , Edward Lee Thorndike, Educational Psychology , Teachers college, Columbia university, page 92:
    • If the human being who answers these tendencies assumes a submissive behavior, in essence a lowering of head and shoulders, wavering glance, absence of all preparations for attack, general weakening of muscle tonus, and hesitancy in movement, the movements of attempt at mastery become modified into attempts at the more obvious swagger, strut and glare of triumph.
  • * 2007 , Brian Watermeyer, Disability and Social Change: A South African Agenda , HSRC Press, page 269:
    • Once oppression has been internalised, little force is needed to keep us submissive .

    Derived terms

    * submissively (adverb) * submissiveness (noun)

    Synonyms

    * docile * meek * slavish * timid * obedient

    Antonyms

    * dominant, domineering (ruling ) * defiant, rebellious (ignoring )