Have you ever heard of a Pecksniffian?

You have to love that word! It was created to describe the characterization of a man named Seth Pecksniff from Charles Dickens’ very long and complex novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. Written in 1844, the nearly 900-page novel describes the lengths of greed, selfishness, hypocrisy, and scheming that some people will undertake in order to accrue fame and money!

Seth Pecksniff, self-proclaimed architect and cousin of the elder Martin Chuzzlewit, is a notoriously self-righteous and hypocritical man, who acts “holier than thou” but actively manipulates and exploits others and when caught shifts blame to someone else in order to protect his “shiny moral character.” His behavior in the novel was so insincere that his very name soon became a catchword for moral hypocr…