as in humble
showing, expressing, or offered in a spirit of humility or unseemly submissiveness demanded nothing less than an abject apology from them

Synonyms & Similar Words

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How does the adjective abject differ from other similar words?

Some common synonyms of abject are ignoble, mean, and sordid. While all these words mean "being below the normal standards of human decency and dignity," abject may imply degradation, debasement, or servility.

abject poverty

When might ignoble be a better fit than abject?

In some situations, the words ignoble and abject are roughly equivalent. However, ignoble suggests a loss or lack of some essential high quality of mind or spirit.

an ignoble scramble after material possessions

When is it sensible to use mean instead of abject?

While in some cases nearly identical to abject, mean suggests small-mindedness, ill temper, or cupidity.

mean and petty satire

When would sordid be a good substitute for abject?

Although the words sordid and abject have much in common, sordid is stronger than all of these in stressing physical or spiritual degradation and abjectness.

a sordid story of murder and revenge

Examples Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of abject It's been a long time since a movie took me from laughing to abject horror in five minutes flat. Ars Technica, 31 Oct. 2024 The agency has 11 food distribution centers for 1 million people in Gaza, more than half of whom UNRWA assesses to live below the abject poverty line of US$ 1.74 per person per day. Nadeen Ebrahim and Salma Arafa, CNN, 28 Oct. 2024 One in five children live in the most abject, dangerous, hopeless, back-breaking, gut-wrenching poverty any of us could imagine. Lizzie Logan, Vulture, 23 Sep. 2024 After a cynical congratulations from the Front Man, Gi-hun is unceremoniously dumped on the streets of Seoul, where the traumatized man refuses his winnings and lives in abject poverty for a year. Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 24 Dec. 2024 See all Example Sentences for abject 
Recent Examples of Synonyms for abject
Adjective
  • The Type 2 sits among some of the more humble and accessible classics.
    Trinity Francis, Forbes, 23 Jan. 2025
  • The Blakes are a humble family and the idea of her dad blowing past security to storm the court had Mikayla cracking up.
    Grace Raynor, The Athletic, 23 Jan. 2025
Adjective
  • His co-stars, like Will Ferrell’s savage Mugatu, Owen Wilson’s stoner hottie Hansel, and Nathan Lee Graham’s servile Todd — all so precise and well-defined in the original’s ravelike milieu — are doomed to retrace their old steps here.
    Sean Malin, Vulture, 5 Sep. 2024
  • These officials could, in turn, redistribute some of their private goods among their own servile lieutenants, but the monarch retained ultimate power to grant or revoke their privileged status.
    Serhiy Kudelia, Foreign Affairs, 27 Feb. 2014
Adjective
  • Each tree has promised itself right up from the ground, branches full of dying... Elegy Written In A City Cemetery Sina Queyras Somebody left the world last night, and last, and last, and last: wild is the glower of wind, and words too thin, too meek to shelter.
    Max Ufberg, hazlitt.net, 10 Jan. 2025
  • He was supposed to be a meek guy who doesn’t speak up.
    Josh Weiss, Forbes, 6 Jan. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Abject.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/abject. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.

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