ingratiating
If someone in your class places an apple on your teacher's desk in an ingratiating manner, that means he's making a calculated move to suck up and win your teacher's favor.
The word ingratiating comes from a combination of the Latin prefix in- meaning "in" and gratia meaning "favor, grace." A person who is ingratiating is trying to get in the favor or grace of those around her. But the word doesn't always have to imply a sly attempt at winning others over, sometimes it can simply mean charming or agreeable. A person's smile can be ingratiating, winning people over simply with its charm.
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capable of winning favor“with open arms and an ingratiating smile”synonyms:pleasinggiving pleasure and satisfaction
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calculated to please or gain favor“a smooth ingratiating manner”synonyms: ingratiatory, insinuatingflatteringshowing or representing to advantage
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Vocabulary lists containing ingratiating
It's important to be precise about behavior. Saying that "someone breaks the rules" is boring and doesn't convey the nerve they have in breaking them the way "someone is brazenly flouting the rules" does. Here are words about behavior that are easy to confuse with other words, or easy to be confused about, period. Is that in- at the beginning of intemperate a negative or not? What does that mean for the word as a whole? What about the in- at the start of inure? Learn this list and find out!
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