"Obsequy" as a more concise synonym of "sycophancy"

Question

Yesterday I was composing some text and found myself in need of a concise, formal word denoting an act or practice of servile, insincere flattery. As I mentally searched for the right word, the semantically-related words sycophant and obsequious came to mind, but neither was quite right for the job: sycophant denotes the actor rather than the action, and obsequious is an adjective rather than a noun. From sycophant I considered sycophancy, but that word just seemed too long and arcane. From obsequious I considered obsequiousness, but that word too is excessively long. Then I thought, what about obsequy? Wouldn't that be the root word of obsequious, just as calumny is the root of calumnious? Surely no one would describe slander as "calumniousness"!

To my surprise, however, I found that most dictionaries (e.g., AHD5, Collins, MW, RH) either don't have an entry for obsequy, or have only a redirect to obsequies—an obscure word I'd never encountered before, meaning "funeral rites". The few references that did have an entry for non-funereal obsequy simply defined it as "obsequiousness".

This surprises me. It seems to me that obsequy—meaning an act or practice of servile, insincere flattery—would be a useful word to have in one's arsenal. To what extent is it [descriptive!], or should it be [prescriptive!], acceptable to use the word in this way?

There are, of course, many other examples of {-ious adjective/-y noun} pairs; a few are acrimonious/acrimony, harmonious/harmony, parsimonious/parsimony, and sanctimonious/sanctimony.

(Incidentally, in that moment yesterday, I ended up throwing formality to the winds and chose ass-kissing. =)

Answer 1

An interesting dilemma!

In Middle English, obsequi was firmly aligned with obsequious:

obsequi n. (1) also obseque. [L obsequium]

Obedient service; the dutiful performance of a certain duty; also, the attentive service of menials

But it was still used in the singular form to refer to the funeral ritual:

(a) a service for the dead; funeral

Although servile insincere flattery was probably among the certain duties in the attentive service of menials in that day, the word is no longer used that way. The vestiges of obsequy are only preserved through the corruption of exsequiae: religious rituals. To use obsequy as a synonym for sycophancy would require turning the clock back quite a few hundred years.

Descriptively, the dilemma is interesting, but it also simple: not today.

Prescriptively, if you start using obsequy that way, it might not take a lot of effort to resurrect the old meaning. Words never die; they just sleep.

Answer 2

The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) has obsequy. It is listed twice, the first entry dealing with the meaning concerning funeral rites.

The second entry lists two senses:

a. Ready compliance with the will or pleasure of another, esp. a superior; deferential service; obsequiousness.

b. An act of compliance or deferential service. Freq. in pl.

Several sample extracts are provided for each dating from 1425 to the present time.

It derives from the classical Latin obsequium - compliance. A French version obseque is dated from 1375.