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:
Poem-sequences dominate Muldoon’s storm of slaps against piety, prudery, cruelty and greed.
From New York Times ● Nov. 11, 2021
Populating the novel is the usual cast of characters, foremost among them the cop shop’s inimitable secretary, Agatino Catarella, who blends obsequiousness, prudery and verbal ineptitude into a patois all his own.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 7, 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
The civil wars and the Empire degraded the character of the people, and the exaggerated prudery of republican manners only served to make the rebound into vice the more irresistible.
From History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne (Vol. 2 of 2) by William Edward Hartpole Lecky
The narrow theological spirit, the moralism à tout propos, the queer provincialities and pruderies, are mere wild weeds in a mountain of flowers.
From Italian Hours by Henry James
Without, as I perceived, hereditary breeding, and without conventional pruderies, she had a rare purity and elevation of feeling, which exerted a manifest and constant influence, sadly needed in a soldiers' hospital.
From The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 Devoted to Literature and National Policy by Various
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
Marriage had surely subtly changed her, giving back to her desires, prejudices, even pruderies of feeling that she had thought she had got rid of for ever long ago.
From Bella Donna A Novel by Robert Smythe Hichens
They catch the idea readily and practice their teachers' precisions and pruderies upon the family.
From Atlantic Classics, Second Series by Jane Addams
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