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officious

 

officious ("eh-FISH-es") adj.

origin: [L officiosus, fr. officium service, office] (1565)

1. Marked by excessive eagerness in offering unwanted services or advice
to others; impertinent, meddlesome.

"A drowning man cannot afford to make nice
distinctions -- cannot afford to ask whether the
helping hand that is extended to him be that of
an equal or an inferior. So he swallowed his
humiliation and threaded his way through the
bewildering turmoil of Broadway, by the side
of his officious new friend."

-- Hjalmar Hjorth Boysen "Tales From Two Hemispheres"

"While we, with vain officious pomp, prepare
To send him back his portion of the war,
A bloody breathless body, which can owe
No farther debt, but to the pow'rs below."

-- Virgil "Aeneid" (Translated by John Dryden)


2. (rare) informal, unofficial