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.

It’s hard to imagine anyone sympathizing with the husband, whose prissiness and lack of self-awareness are both laughable and depressing to think about.

From Seattle Times • Jun. 6, 2023

To call someone “cultured” these days implies passivity and an out-of-touch prissiness.

From Washington Post • Apr. 21, 2021

At first, Austin scorns Lee’s fecklessness and Lee scorns Austin’s bourgeois prissiness.

From Economist • Aug. 3, 2017

Sponsored by the local YMCA, this father-daughter bonding jamboree was like Girl Scouts without the prissiness or the cookies.

From Salon • Jun. 18, 2016

She had to make a great effort not to throw at them their prissiness, their poverty of spirit, their delusions of grandeur.

From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez