This is a post dedicated to... well, you know who you are. Anyway, this is for you.

Uriah Heep (ur-AYAH heep) noun:
A hypocritically humble person.
[After Uriah Heep, a character in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield.]


The character is notable for his cloying humility, obsequiousness, and general insincerity. His constant references to David as "Master Copperfield" are repeated so often by Dickens that they quickly seem insincere. He is the central antagonist of the later part of the book. David first meets him when he is living with Mr. Wickfield and his daughter Agnes. Uriah works as Mr. Wickfield's clerk and because of Mr. Wickfield's alcoholism Uriah controls most of his life and business. He eventually succeeds in having himself raised to being a full partner in the business. His eventual ambition is to marry Agnes and gain control of the Wickfield fortune. Like most of Dickens' villains, greed is his main motivation. Heep is eventually stymied by Mr. Micawber, Thomas Traddles, with help from David and Agnes. Once his fraud and treachery is unmasked, he persists in hounding Micawber and Copperfield. He is sent to prison where he is a model prisoner.

While much of David Copperfield is autobiographical there is no evidence that Heep was based on a character in Dickens' life, though some believe him to be based on Hans Christian Anderson whom Dickens met shortly before writing the novel.