fulsome

fulsome, oily, unctuous, oleaginous, slick, soapy are comparable when they mean too obviously extravagant or ingratiating to be accepted as genuine or sincere.

Fulsome stresses a surfeit of something which in proper measure is not displeasing but which in abundance is cloyingly extravagant and offensive. Typically the term is applied to praise, flattery, and compliments, with the intent to suggest that they exceed the bounds of good taste and are lacking in truth and sincerity

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fulsome flattery

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he was bedaubing one of those worthies with the most fulsome praise— Smollett

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the fulsome strains of courtly adulation— Edgeworth

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he could never be made ridiculous, for he was always ready to laugh at himself and to prick the bladder of fulsome praise— Buchany

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Oily and unctuous both suggest the smoothness and blandness of oil.

Oily, as applied to persons and their utterances and acts, carries a strong implication of an offensively ingratiating quality and sometimes suggests a suavity, a benevolence, or a kindliness that is assumed as a mask for evil or dubious ends

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an oily scoundrel

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oily manners

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oily smugness

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only oily and commonplace evasion— Stevenson

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an oily, sycophantic press agent— Rogow

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Unctuous, on the other hand, suggests the assumption, often in hypocrisy, of the tone or manner of one who is grave, devout, or spiritual

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the unctuous grandiloquence of Dickens's Chadband

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the look was, perhaps, unctuous, rather than spiritual, and had, so to speak, a kind of fleshy effulgence . . . . He . . . smiled with more unctuous benignity than ever— Hawthorne

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Mark Twain writes those words with an almost unctuous gravity of conviction— Brooks

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the devastating portrait of the unctuous literary opportunist— Cordell

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Oleaginous is sometimes used in place of oily or unctuous when pomposity is connoted or a mocking note is desired

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the lank party who snuffles the responses with such oleaginous sanctimony— Farrar

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Slick may suggest the assumption of a smooth, ingratiating manner, but it usually stresses the speciousness of that appearance and often imputes sly wily trickiness to the person who assumes it

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this slick type of youngster anticipates exactly how adults will react to him and plays on their sensibilities— Meyer

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a pair of slick operators had given the district a bad name by salting a barren claim— Oscar Lewis

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Soapy comes close to unctuous in its extended sense, but it carries almost no suggestion of hypocrisy: rather it connotes an unduly soft, bland, or ingratiating manner

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soapy supplications for unity— New Republic

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Analogous words: lavish, *profuse, exuberant: *excessive, extravagant: cloying, satiating, sating (see SATIATE): bombastic, grandiloquent, magniloquent (see RHETORICAL)