priggish

American  

[prig-ish] / ˈprɪg ɪʃ /

adjective

1. fussy about trivialities or propriety, especially in a self-righteous or irritating manner.

   At the beginning of the book, Eustace is an unpleasant, unlikable, and priggish character.

   He never softened his message to please genteel tastes or priggish scruples.

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Other Word Forms

• priggishly adverb
• priggishness noun
• unpriggish adjective

Etymology

Origin of priggish

prig ¹ ( def. ) + -ish ¹

Example Sentences

Isabel, unmarried, priggish and devoted to her housekeeping routine, lives alone in her family’s home, ostensibly keeping it safe for the brother who inherited it.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 10, 2024

Woolf, like several other characters in “Run,” is based on a real person; Cocker-Norris, whom Oyelowo renders with an amusingly priggish persnickety-ness, is not.

From Washington Post • Sep. 13, 2022

He’s so insufferably priggish that at school his name, William Orser, has by common consent been elided to the nonexistent word “Worser,” just to drive him crazy.

From New York Times • Aug. 12, 2022

The corporate culture that it reflects and embodies is, above all, sanctimoniousness, nostalgic, and priggish.

From The New Yorker • Nov. 19, 2019

Mantell was a lanky assemblage of shortcomings–he was vain, self-absorbed, priggish, neglectful of his family–but never was there a more devoted amateur paleontologist.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson