adjective

• Self-righteously moralistic and superior.

  ‘a priggish little pedant’

  More example sentences

  • ‘she was priggish about sex’
  • ‘Fortunately, the message couched within the narrative is neither excessively moralistic nor priggish.’
  • ‘A pretty good defence mechanism is to be open - but also, I think, without being too priggish and sanctimonious, it's a kind of responsibility if you're in public life.’
  • ‘The movie is splendidly arrayed visually, but transforms her prim, priggish character and makes her lusty, strong-willed and far too politically progressive for her era.’
  • ‘In fact it is difficult to imagine anyone more divorced from the spirit of the Jazz Age than the priggish, puritanical, non-smoking, non-drinking young Popper.’
  • ‘Actress Frances O'Connor brings a refreshing candour to the most insufferably priggish of all Austen's heroines, Fanny Price, and Alessandro Nivola is irresistibly rakish as her potential beau.’
  • ‘The first thing she says about him is that he is ‘extremely down to earth’, which certainly contrasts with Fiennes, whose public persona exists somewhere between enigmatic and priggish.’
  • ‘But if the anti-drugs campaigners are priggish and authoritarian, the arguments of pro-drugs campaigners are often equally unappealing.’
  • ‘Page 1 of the script describes the central character, Raymond Shaw, as young, handsome, wooden, and priggish.’
  • ‘Neil is vain, priggish and, like his wife Iona, grimly materialistic.’
  • ‘That said, the text is often intractable or so annoyingly assertive as to appear priggish.’
  • ‘There's no point in being priggish about its ‘low standards‘.’
  • ‘The notion of a shared responsibility to the community through a concern for and an acceptance of the individuals within it sounds considerably more priggish than the programmes themselves.’
  • ‘But, while Hare's play captures superbly the spirit of the 80s, it leaves you unsure whether Isobel is a priggish pain or a symbol of transcendent virtue.’
  • ‘Tom, a lively and adventurous lad, lives with his priggish brother Sid and his good-hearted Aunt Polly in the quiet town of St Petersburg, Missouri.’
  • ‘I consider offering the countervailing maxim ‘punctuality is the politeness of kings’, but feel it might sound priggish.’
  • ‘Leslie Joseph portrays the small-minded, priggish, self-satisfied spinster to a T.’
  • ‘You really do believe in the stiff-necked priggish Edward, to the point where you want to punch him.’
  • ‘He had been very careful not to buy anything too priggish, and flattered himself to say he had done a good job with it.’
  • ‘The irony of Kinsey's character is that he isn't given to temptation in the usual sense (except to be as uncompromising as his priggish father).’
  • ‘Tut-tutting this sort of thing seems to me to be priggish.’
  • ‘Equally irresistible, as it turns out, is the priggish Darcy, whose beauty and charm sneak up on you, just as they do on Bridget, mid-way through the film.’
  • ‘His father's ‘prime horror’ was of prigs, and yet James does seem here to be awfully priggish, a fussy and self-obsessed old man.’
  • ‘He was, in fact, a serious, somewhat priggish young man, though he often gave signs of light-heartedness both as a boy and in later life.’
  • ‘And to be priggish about the sunglasses that people buy is out of touch with how people live their lives.’

  Synonyms

  self-righteous, holier-than-thou, smug, sanctimonious, moralistic, sententious, prudish, puritanical, prim, strait-laced, tight-laced, stuffy, starchy, prissy, Victorian, schoolmarmish, schoolmistressy, old-maidish, narrow, narrow-minded, censorious, Pecksniffian, Pharisaic, hypocritical

  View synonyms