noun

• 1The state or quality of being proper, correct, and socially acceptable.

  ‘provincial notions of respectability’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Teaching offered both social respectability and an opportunity to earn a living.’
  • ‘It describes the way the lower castes tend to imitate the customs and rituals of the upper layers in order to gain social respectability.’
  • ‘What they seemed to entirely be missing in their analysis is the notion of respectability.’
  • ‘If marriage confers social status and respectability, adultery confers a stigma.’
  • ‘It's a very worrying development and it's gaining social respectability.’
  • ‘They spend their fortune trying to gain social respectability.’
  • ‘They were well aware that, in order to retain social respectability, their sexual behaviour had to be beyond reproach.’
  • ‘The social respectability of science attracted the patronage of wealthy and influential figures.’
  • ‘The acquisition of land not only gave social respectability but also wealth.’
  • ‘In our family, integrity is there, respectability also.’
  • ‘He had brought nobility and respectability to the British stage.’
  • ‘For a long time, the capital of Victoria seemed to be the seat of provincial respectability.’
  • ‘In the course of her conversation on the day of the workshop, she often referred to the terms dignity and respectability.’
  • ‘But the gravitational pull of bourgeois respectability remained strong.’
  • ‘The Sixties completely wiped away the notion that virginity was essential to respectability and decency.’
  • ‘Has the notion of solidarity escaped him in his flight for respectability?’
  • ‘Modern dress also looks anachronistic in a world where respectability is a prime virtue and cuckoldry a social stigma.’
  • ‘Wealth is a marker for social status, success, and respectability, just as poverty is stigmatising.’
  • ‘The old respectability of the establishment could no longer cover up the major moral lapses of the financial sector.’
  • ‘They've got that credibility and that respectability back.’

  Synonyms

  stateliness, nobleness, nobility, majesty, regalness, regality, royalness, courtliness, augustness, loftiness, exaltedness, lordliness, impressiveness, grandeur, magnificence

  1. 1.1The state or quality of being accepted as valid or important within a particular field.
     ‘scientific respectability’
     More example sentences

     • ‘They desperately crave scientific respectability, but it is their own theory that prevents them from attaining it.’
     • ‘In this way, perhaps, he seeks to cloak his book in an aura of scientific respectability.’
     • ‘Now many astrologers seem to have a hankering, a hunger even, for scientific respectability that never fails to amaze me.’
     • ‘This is how it achieves respectability, legitimacy and, very often, public funding.’
     • ‘His take on the respectability of SETI in the scientific community is unduly pessimistic.’