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
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
She was dubbed by Time "the Mao Tse-tung of Women's Liberation," and rebutted by Mailer in his book "The Prisoner of Sex," in which he mocked her as "the Battling Annie of some new prudery."
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 7, 2017
He discovered that he hated everything in Denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of Parisian Bohemianism—everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law!
From Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art by John Gould Fletcher
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
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
They catch the idea readily and practice their teachers' precisions and pruderies upon the family.
From Atlantic Classics, Second Series by Jane Addams
Forget wholly and for ever all small pruderies, and remember that you cannot change ancestral feelings of right and wrong without what is practically soul-murder.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) by Andrew Lang
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.
