sequacious

English

Etymology

From Latin sequax (“a follower”), from sequi (“to follow”), + -ious (“forming adjectives”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɪˈkweɪʃəs/
• Rhymes: -eɪʃəs

Adjective

sequacious (comparative more sequacious, superlative most sequacious)

1. (Of objects, obsolete) Likely to follow or yield to physical pressure; easily shaped or molded.
   • 1640, Edward Reynolds, A Treatise on the Passions and Faculties of the Soule of Man, page 321:

     Of all Fire there is none so ductile, so sequacious and obsequious as this of Wrath.

   • 1752, Christopher Smart, Hop Garden, page 67:

     Now extract
     From the sequacious earth the pole.

   • 1755 April, Samuel Johnson translating Bacon in A Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. "Forge":

     In the greater bodies the forge was easy, the matter being ductile and sequacious and obedient to the stroke of the artificer, and apt to be drawn, formed, and moulded.

2. (Of people) Likely to follow, conform, or yield to others, especially showing unthinking adherence to others' ideas; easily led.
   • 1650, John Trapp, A Clavis to the Bible, page 69:

     See how sequacious these poor creatures are to God their Centurion.

   • 1653, John Gauden, Hieraspistes, Preface:

     By seeming to... admire their many new masters, and their rarer gifts; which make them worthy indeed of such soft and sequacious disciples.

   • 1687, Dryden, first ode for St. Cecilia's Day

     Orpheus could lead the savage race;
     And trees uprooted left their place;
     Sequacious of the lyre...

   • 1853, William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform, 2nd ed., p. 787:

     The scheme of pantheistic omniscience, so prevalent among the sequacious thinkers of the day,... would have found little favour with the religious and philosophic nescience of St Austin.

   • 1885, Charles Grant B. Allen, Babylon, volume I, page 228:

     Here... he could wander out into the woods alone (after he had shaken off the attentions of the too sequacious Almeda).

   • 2018 August 6, Erik Wemple, “What a Dumb Weekend”, in The Washington Post:

     After plowing through some names—including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, “the great Lou Dobbs” and the incomparably sequacious Steve Doocy... Trump caught himself...

3. (Of musical notes or poetic feet) Following neatly or smoothly.
   • 1796, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Effusion, Canto xxxv:

     And now, its strings
     Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
     Over delicious surges sink and rise.

   • 1864, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster‎^[1], page 243:

     That Hellenic speech... that rises and falls in Plato with the long sequacious music of an Æolian lute.

4. (Of thought) Following logically or in an unvarying and orderly procession, tending in a single intellectual direction.
   • 1835 August, Thomas De Quincey, “Sketches of Life & Manners”, in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, page 546:

     Milton was not an extensive or discursive thinker, as Shakespeare was; for the motions of his mind were slow, solemn, and sequacious, like those of the planets.

Usage notes

In the sense of "often following", sequacious originally described the leader or leaders using the prepositions to and of but this format is now considered obsolete.

Synonyms

• (easily shaped): ductile, pliant, malleable, tractable
• (easily led): subservient, servile, following, attendant, credulous, unoriginal, tractable, obedient
• (following smoothly): flowing

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “following logically”): rambling, discursive, extensive

Derived terms

• sequaciously
• sequaciousness

Related terms

English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *sekʷ-‎ (3 c, 0 e)

References

• “sequacious, adj.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1912.
• "sequacious, adj.", in Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Vol. XXIII, 1828.
• "WaPo: Doocy 'Incomparably Sequacious'" in "Latest Trends", Merriam-Webster, 6 August 2018.