Englishglib
adjective
the glib phrases rolled off his tongue |
a glib PR official:
slick, pat, neat, plausible, silky, smooth-talking, fast-talking;
smooth, urbane, smooth-tongued, silver-tongued, smooth-spoken;
fluent, voluble, loquacious, having kissed the Blarney Stone;
disingenuous, insincere, facile, shallow, superficial, simplistic, oversimplified, easy, ready, flippant;
informal flip, sweet-talking, with the gift of the gab.
▷antonyms sincere, thoughtful; inarticulate.
| choose the right word | glib, slick, smooth, urbane |
These words, with varying degrees of disapproval, describe extreme ease and confidence in speech or manner. ■ To be glib is always bad. The word most commonly describes utterances that are too easy, fluent, and inadequate to deal with the complexity of an issue, or are too readily produced to be sincere (they should be on their guard against accepting glib answers). ■ Slick is used of a person or their actions or utterances; it indicates expertise and the assurance that that brings, but it usually implies that this is at the expense of content (a slick public relations campaign) or of honesty and altruism (slick financiers and face-grinding industrialists). ■ Someone described as smooth is regarded as possibly insincere or too charming to be trusted (he was too smooth, and his charm a little too insincere, to be a real gentleman). ■ Urbane is the most positive term. It is used of a person, action, or utterance and indicates a polished and relaxed ease and charm (his urbane discourse is both enlivening and instructive). Urbane is almost always used to describe men and not women. | |