pious
Americanadjective
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having or showing a dutiful spirit of reverence for God or an earnest wish to fulfill religious obligations.
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characterized by a hypocritical concern with virtue or religious devotion; sanctimonious.
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practiced or used in the name of real or pretended religious motives, or for some ostensibly good object; falsely earnest or sincere.
a pious deception.
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of or relating to religious devotion; sacred rather than secular.
pious literature.
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having or showing appropriate respect or regard for parents or others.
adjective
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having or expressing reverence for a god or gods; religious; devout
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marked by reverence
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marked by false reverence; sanctimonious
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sacred; not secular
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archaic having or expressing devotion for one's parents or others
Related Words
See religious.
Other Word Forms
- piously adverb
- piousness noun
- prepious adjective
- prepiously adverb
- pseudopious adjective
- pseudopiously adverb
- quasi-pious adjective
- quasi-piously adverb
- semipious adjective
- semipiously adverb
- semipiousness noun
- superpious adjective
- superpiously adverb
- superpiousness noun
- unpious adjective
- unpiously adverb
Etymology
Origin of pious
First recorded in 1595–1605; from Latin pius, akin to piāre “to propitiate”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The sun was eclipsed, horses were spooked and the pious dropped to their knees.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 23, 2026
And two Americans: Kenyon, a wry, observant, skeptical humanist sculptor, perhaps a stand-in for Hawthorne himself; and Hilda, a New England Puritan painter—self-possessed, pious, unswervingly loyal, pure as a flight of doves.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 27, 2026
Erdogan, a devout Muslim and graduate of a clerical school, has previously said he aims to raise a "pious generation".
From Barron's • Feb. 25, 2026
In Mumbai, the Jain community, which considers feeding pigeons a pious duty, has been vocal in their protests.
From BBC • Aug. 17, 2025
Many of Philadelphia’s most pious citizens would not let the fever disappear entirely, either.
From "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" by Jim Murphy
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
