prudery
Americannoun
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pruderies
plural
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excessive propriety or modesty in speech, conduct, etc.
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pruderies, prudish actions, phrases, or words.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of prudery
From the French word pruderie, dating back to 1700–10. See prude, -ery
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.
See Examples For:
He was fired because of indefensible and harmful prudery.
From Salon ● Mar. 18, 2022
Poem-sequences dominate Muldoon’s storm of slaps against piety, prudery, cruelty and greed.
From New York Times ● Nov. 11, 2021
My objection isn’t rooted in prudery but in artistic tact.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2019
Are prudery and feminist orthodoxy the same thing?
From The Guardian ● Aug. 28, 2014
Such touches of over-sensitive prudery set aside, the more light we get on this friend of Keats, Richard 368 Woodhouse, the higher grows our esteem both for his character and judgment.
From Life of John Keats His Life and Poetry, his Friends, Critics and After-fame by Sidney Colvin
The Bavarians have no false pruderies, no nasty little nicenesses.
From Europe After 8:15 by Thomas H. Benton
The crack of that great spark emptied the jar; the American people forgot all about their pledges and pruderies during the four years of Civil War.
From A Book of Prefaces by H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken
Not, of course, that I have no pruderies, no fastidious metes and bounds.
From Europe After 8:15 by Thomas H. Benton
She has stopped my mouth overlong with her pruderies and her scruples.
From The Fair Maid of Perth Or, St. Valentine's Day by Sir Walter Scott
Her remark in reference to the servants showed him how far she was from any conventional pruderies.
From Shadows of Flames A Novel by Amélie Rives
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.
