Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or character of being priggish.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or quality of being priggish.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun exaggerated and arrogant properness

Etymologies

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Examples

  • It was in consequence of that regret and his controversies with Prothero while they travelled together in China that his concern about what he called priggishness arose.

    The Research Magnificent 1906

  • "Sets" are the rule, and priggishness is rampant, even in the primeval forest.

    The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton William Henry Burton Wilkins 1897

  • Both she and Edmund have highly developed moral sensibilities a kinder obverse of "priggishness" and Edmund, particularly, has to fight the temptation to compromise.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Tim Stretton 2009

  • Both she and Edmund have highly developed moral sensibilities a kinder obverse of "priggishness" and Edmund, particularly, has to fight the temptation to compromise.

    :Acquired Taste Tim Stretton 2009

  • But one of the reasons why the heavenly life is apt to appear in prospect so wearisome a thing is, because we are brought up to feel that the whole character is flattened out and charged with a serene kind of priggishness, which takes all the salt out of life.

    The Child of the Dawn Arthur Christopher Benson 1893

  • [17] As I may have remarked elsewhere, they often seem to confuse it with "priggishness," "cant," and other amiable _cosas de Inglaterra_.

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century George Saintsbury 1889

  • The fact was, he was an ardent believer in the Good Boy of a certain order of school tales -- the boy who is seized with a sudden conviction of the intrinsic baseness of boyhood, and does all in his power to get rid of the harmful taint; the boy who renounces his old comrades and his natural tastes (which after all seldom have any serious harm in them), to don a panoply of priggishness which is too often kick-proof.

    Vice Versa or A Lesson to Fathers F. Anstey 1895

  • They bicker constantly, Clemen's Falstaffian appetites and uncontrollable bodily urges clashing with the priggishness and military discipline of Jimmy, a former air-force officer, and their ill-tempered dialogues are often hilarious.

    Adios, Warlock Joshua Lustig 2011

  • Austen's heroine is Fanny Price, informally adopted by her rich uncle and aunt; Fanny is generally passive and when she expresses an opinion tends towards priggishness (with the author's full approval); the stable conservative world of Mansfield Park is under threat from the cosmopolitan horrors of London, but Fanny supports the resistance.

    February Books 12) Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen nwhyte 2010

  • Hell, even if you do ask these sort of questions of any book that comes along, the binary quality of selection rather than evaluation carries a certain … muso priggishness.

    Critique From HereNow Hal Duncan 2009

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