Officious vs Impertinent - What's the difference?
officious | impertinent | Synonyms |
(obsolete) obliging, attentive, eager to please
Offensively intrusive or interfering in offering advice and services
insolent, ill-mannered
* Tillotson
* Jeremy Taylor
irrelevant (opposite of pertinent)
An impertinent individual.
* (Maria Edgeworth)
As adjectives the difference between officious and impertinent
is that officious is obliging, attentive, eager to please while impertinent is insolent, ill-mannered.As a noun impertinent is
an impertinent individual.officious
English
Adjective
(en adjective)Derived terms
* officious intermeddlerimpertinent
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- things that are impertinent to us
- How impertinent that grief was which served no end!
Usage notes
Although, historically, definition 2 was the original (derived from the French below) usage; meaning gradually changed to definition 1. More recently general usage has come to, once again, incorporate definition 2. As many older speakers will consider definition 2 incorrect, avoiding the word altogether may be advisable. The construction "not pertinent" is one possible alternative.Synonyms
* See alsoNoun
(en noun)- comfortably recessed from curious impertinents