sanctimonious, sanctimony. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993

Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.

sanctimonious (adj.), sanctimony (n.)


In the mid-sixteenth century the adjective meant “holy, saintly,” but by the early seventeenth century it had come to mean both “holy” and “hypocritically holy,” and today it has pejorated to mean only “affectedly saintly, falsely holy.”	1