Roth, priggish to the end, responds, "I'm warning you—stay away from my kids!"
Perhaps it is priggish of me, but I feel that if I'm mean in one thing I may be mean in another.
He was deep in a business discussion with his priggish son-in-law.
He was selfish and priggish and worse, he was piggish—A regular beast of a brute.
She watched Paul growing irritable, priggish, and melancholic.
Why, how absurd and priggish and offensive such a course of action would be?
They would say she was mean and priggish, for she might have told Berta as easily as not.
She had boasted of her success; and to be successful was merely to be priggish.
What chance is there for any one with priggish tendencies in a world like ours?
He was not in the least priggish and gave himself no sacerdotal airs.
"precisian in speech or manners," 1753, originally in reference to theological scruples (1704), of unknown origin; earlier appearances of the same word meaning "dandy, fop" (1670s), "thief" (c.1600; in form prigger recorded from 1560s) could be related, as could thieves' cant prig "a tinker" (1560s).
A p[rig] is wise beyond his years in all the things that do not matter. A p. cracks nuts with a steam hammer: that is, calls in the first principles of morality to decide whether he may, or must, do something of as little importance as drinking a glass of beer. On the whole, one may, perhaps, say that all his different characteristics come from the combination, in varying proportions, of three things--the desire to do his duty, the belief that he knows better than other people, & blindness to the difference in value between different things. ["anonymous essay," quoted in Fowler, 1926]Related: Priggery.
