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pecksniff

American  
[pek-snif] / ˈpɛk snɪf /

noun

  1. a person of Pecksniffian attitudes or behavior.

    a virtuousness that only a pecksniff could aspire to.

Etymology

Origin of pecksniff

First recorded in 1910–15; Pecksniffian

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.

And yet every time someone from my generation talks about how important phones are to democracy, there’s always some old pecksniff primly telling us that our phones don’t give us real democracy.

From Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Doctorow, Cory

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.