According to Eric Zorn's article (I hope you can access it), the SAT is moving away from " low-frequency words that would be unlikely to be assessed directly as words-in-context questions on the redesigned SAT." [I find that quote unwieldy but that's how it was written. Perhaps the SAT people need more education on the use of words!] Obsequious is one of those words, along with propinquity, enervation, punctilious and lachrymose. I hate that move. Plus, while I don't hear it every day, I hear obsequious being used often enough, don't you? Surely enervation is used a lot in healthcare and science, but maybe its context is too narrow?

Eric had a nice back story (from Ben Zimmer) on obsequious. Apparently, it has become increasingly negative. Originally it just meant "ready to serve," but has changed to be more deferential, with synonyms being bootlickers, fawners, sycophants and toadies.

What are your thoughts on taking these great words out of the SAT? One of their reasons is that they don't want to reward those who merely crammed for the SAT. How about rewarding those, though, who actually use the words? Heck, just this month Tribune theatre critic Chris Jones used obsequious when describing a character as being "obsequious, but clearly malevolent." Love it!

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synonyms being bootlickers, fawners, sycophants and toadies.

Don't forget brown-noser.

The last sentence in the article sums it all up for me:

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Just because students no longer have to know it doesn't mean they shouldn't want to learn it.

I've always known obsequious to mean obsessively deferential. It's also a term I'd have thought the Monty Python bunch could have used in "The Life of Brian." Obsequious Toadus, the sycophant, or some such.

I thought it referred to the shiny things on Liberace's outfits.

Those were sequence, because they were all lined up one after the other. And how could we forget that ancient Briton graffiti artist who tended cattle, the Rune stone Cowboy?

Geoff, you are right about what obsequious means, and, proof, brown-nose is perfect. However, the word seems to have evolved over time as it originally wasn't so pejorative.

arnie, I agree about the last sentence.

I also was struck by the authors using obsequious, such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens and James. And that obsequious uses the Latin root - sequi, to follow, that is also found in sequence, sequel and consequence. How did "ready to serve" derive from that?

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How did "ready to serve" derive from that?

He's a follower.