respectability
Americannoun
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respectabilities
plural
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the state or quality of being respectable.
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respectable social standing, character, or reputation.
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a respectable person or persons.
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respectabilities, things accepted as respectable.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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nonrespectabilitynoun
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prerespectabilitynoun
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semirespectabilitynoun
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superrespectabilitynoun
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unrespectabilitynoun
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of respectability
First recorded in 1775–85; respectable + -ity
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 desires respectability, but savors the buzz, the camaraderie — the honor among thieves.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026
One of Christianity’s deepest convictions is that social standing, respectability and material recognition are not the measures of a life.
From Salon ● Jun. 5, 2026
“It throws an air of respectability about five-dollar dealings that are sheer gambling,” the Inquirer wrote Sept. 25, 1878.
From Barron's ● Apr. 7, 2026
One victim's family says Bush operated behind a veneer of respectability.
From BBC ● Apr. 2, 2026
Those who found this last story less than credible nonetheless recognized the usefulness of keeping the strange girl outside the circle of respectability.
From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead
His neuroticism, although he learned to control it. left him with a lifelong terror of going beyond the "cleanly respectabilities."
From Time Magazine Archive
He had wrapped himself in that impenetrable mantle of cold scorn, and thus he watched with a moody air the crowd of umbrella-carrying respectabilities, who hurried on their way without a thought of him.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, March 7, 1891 by Various
One great source of perplexity in the case, is the excessive urbanity of the imperfect respectabilities themselves.
From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 by William Chambers
He was in point of fact the soul of sobriety and the mirror of all the respectabilities in his serious dissenting world.
From Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle by Henry Noel Brailsford
Adieu, my Friend: it is silent Sunday; the populace not yet admitted to their beer- shops, till the respectabilities conclude their rubric- mummeries,—a much more audacious feat than beer!
From The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. by Thomas Carlyle
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.
