Flattery vs Forspeak - What's the difference?
flattery | forspeak |
(uncountable) Excessive praise or approval, which is often insincere and sometimes contrived to win favour.
*
, title=The Mirror and the Lamp
, chapter=2 (countable) An instance of excessive praise.
To charm; bewitch.
* 1601 , Thomas Campion, ‘So tyr'd are all my thoughts’:
*1971 , , Religion and the Decline of Magic , Folio Society 2012, p. 180:
*:Thus if any inhabitant of mid-sixteenth-century Maidstone suspected that he had been forspoken , he would go off for advice to one Kiterell, a sorcerer who lived at Bethersden […].
To injure or cause bad luck through immoderate praise or flattery; affect with the curse of an evil tongue, which brings ill luck upon all objects of its praise.
(obsolete) To forbid; prohibit.
As a noun flattery
is (uncountable) excessive praise or approval, which is often insincere and sometimes contrived to win favour.As a verb forspeak is
to charm; bewitch.flattery
English
Noun
citation, passage=That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr. Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery , seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired.}}
Synonyms
* See alsoAnagrams
*forspeak
English
Alternative forms
* forespeakVerb
- How are my powres fore-spoke ? what strange distaste is this?
- Thou hast forspoke my being in these wars, And say'st, it is not fit. ? Shakespeare.