OFFICIOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does officious mean? 

• OFFICIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective OFFICIOUS has 1 sense:

1. intrusive in a meddling or offensive manner

  Familiarity information: OFFICIOUS used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OFFICIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Intrusive in a meddling or offensive manner

Synonyms:

busy; busybodied; interfering; meddlesome; meddling; officious

Context example:

busy about other people's business

Similar:

intrusive (tending to intrude (especially upon privacy))

Derivation:

officiousness (aggressiveness as evidenced by intruding; by advancing yourself or your ideas without invitation)

 Context examples 

You are rather disposed to call his interference officious?

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for I now drew near him again.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

One hates to be officious, to be giving bad impressions, making mischief.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

As you didn't understand me, Master Copperfield, resumed Uriah in the same officious manner, I may take the liberty of umbly mentioning, being among friends, that I have called Doctor Strong's attention to the goings-on of Mrs. Strong.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The reason lay in your answer to that most officious policeman, in which I seemed to discern some glimmering of good feeling upon your part—more, at any rate, than I am accustomed to associate with your profession.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But, however, I soon found it would not do; he was bent upon going, and as I hate to be worrying and officious, I said no more; but my heart quite ached for him at every jolt, and when we got into the rough lanes about Stoke, where, what with frost and snow upon beds of stones, it was worse than anything you can imagine, I was quite in an agony about him.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Its effect upon her appears in the immediate resolution it produced: as soon as she found I was really gone from Randalls, she closed with the offer of that officious Mrs. Elton; the whole system of whose treatment of her, by the bye, has ever filled me with indignation and hatred.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Every qualification is raised at times, by the circumstances of the moment, to more than its real value; and she was sometimes worried down by officious condolence to rate good-breeding as more indispensable to comfort than good-nature.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Elizabeth's misery increased, at such unnecessary, such officious attention!

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I was heavier at heart when I packed up such of my books and clothes as still remained there to be sent to Dover, than I cared to show to Uriah Heep; who was so officious to help me, that I uncharitably thought him mighty glad that I was going.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)