You’re a highly literate person, ever so widely versed in the ways of the word, so of course you can picture what these quotes from hits in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (with its cited sources) are describing:
- a simpering, whimpering child (The Nanny)
- that simpering, doe-eyed ex-housewife (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)
- you simpering twit (Batman: The Animated Series)
- simpering at me over the meatloaf (Confrontation)
- not posing or simpering, but doing something useful (Paradise Found)
- am I not simpering hard enough (Miss Sloane)
If you see someone described as “simpering,” you will undoubtedly have a good sense of what the mood and attitude are, and what kind of person and relationship is involved.
But can you define it?
If I asked you to simper, what would you do?
Should I have asked something simpler? It can’t be a very complex act, can it, simpering? But I asked the question “Without looking it up, how do you define or describe simpering?” on a couple of social media platforms and got varied responses:
- fake obsequiousness to manipulate
- self-pitying, self-serving whining
- way over-the-top fanboying
- obsequious, performatively unassertive, and gratingly ingratiating
- affected sweetness/cutesiness; fake attempt to charm
- coy and falsely shy
- something like having a silly (embarrassed? self-conscious?) smile
- smilingly whimpering
It spreads over a saccharine spectrum from sucking up to smiling fatuously. Quotes from literature give an at least equal range – let me turn again to the Corpus of Contemporary American English for simper:
- learning to simper in that charming southern way (The Adventuress Lady)
- we also like our heroines to have less simper and more personality (Entertainment Weekly)
- and the way they simper like starstruck teenage girls (Fantasy & Science Fiction)
- learn to handle things with a resounding bang, not a girlish simper (Atlanta Journal Constitution)
But in some cases, the author seems to have a different sense of the word:
- Peter’s expression turned into a mocking simper (Ender in Exile)
- his lips curled into a simper (Ploughshares)
- a mean little simper accompanied her statement (Hudson Review)
- a bored, cruel simper lifts the scar on his lower lip (Harper’s Magazine)
So… what’s going on here? This doesn’t quite seem like simper fidelis.
Let’s have a look at what dictionaries actually give for the meaning of simper.
Merriam-Webster is concise – verb, intransitive: “to smile in a silly, affected, or ingratiating manner”; noun: “a silly, affected, or ingratiating smile.” Smile? No sound or anything like that? Just smile? Not quite; there’s also a transitive form of the verb: “to say with a simper.” Smile plus words.
Wiktionary is also brief – verb: “to smile in a foolish, frivolous, self-conscious, coy, obsequious, or smug manner”; noun: “a foolish, frivolous, self-conscious, or affected smile; a smirk.” OK, but smug is different from the other manners, and a smirk is different from the other kinds of smile. The others are deliberately inferior, status-wise, while smug and smirk are pointedly superior. This needs a bit more thought.
The Oxford English Dictionary is more replete, as is its wont, but in essence it’s in agreement with Merriam-Webster. The intransitive verb is “to smile in a silly, self-conscious, or affectedly coy or bashful manner, or in a way that is expressive of or is intended to convey guileless pleasure, childlike innocence, or the like”; the transitive verb is “to say, utter, or express (something) with a simper, or in a simpering manner”; the noun is “an affectedly coy or bashful smile; a smile expressive of, or intended to convey, guileless pleasure, childlike innocence, or the like; a smirk; an act of simpering.”
That was going well – including the “in a simpering manner” loophole – but there’s that smirk again. So let’s look at the OED’s definition of smirk: “an affected or simpering smile; a silly, conceited, smiling look.”
Hmm… circularity of definition aside, that’s not how I use smirk – how about you? I go more with Wiktionary’s definition: “an uneven, often crooked smile that is insolent, self-satisfied, conceited or scornful” or “a forced or affected smile.” But then Wiktionary gives simper as a synonym of smirk.
I’m sure I’m just missing something here. Facial expressions convey attitudes and negotiate relationships, and perhaps you could tell me how something that conveys “affectedly coy or bashful” can equally convey “insolent or conceited.” The looks might be similar in the broad strokes, but it’s like sugar and salt: you can say they’re both granular and white, but when you put them into use there’s no confusion as to which is which.
But all these writers quoted are such fine writers, really quite respected, and they’re all published and paid and widely read; I guess there’s just something new I’ve learned from them today.
But, then, the other question: Is simpering really a matter of a kind of smile above all? Couldn’t you simper without smiling? Say, by some other gesture, or by words alone? Gosh, I don’t know, I couldn’t possibly say…
Sesquiotica 