prissy
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of prissy
Explanation
A prissy person likes things to be neat and tidy, and expects people to follow the rules and be extremely polite. If your prissy cousin invites you to a tea party, you'd better arrive on time and wear your white gloves. Prissy people are extremely prim and proper, and they may also be so fastidious that the sight of your muddy dog running through the dining room will disgust them. You could also complain about your school's prissy dress code, which doesn't allow you to wear your Wonder Woman costume to math class. Prissy is thought to be a Southern US invention from the late 1800s, either rooted in precise, or a combination of sissy and prim.
Vocabulary lists containing prissy
Bridge to Terabithia
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The Shining
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The Sound and the Fury
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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.
Opposite Corbery, Clément Hervieu-Léger is prissy and repressed as a bewigged Robespierre, with a dancer’s ramrod posture throughout.
From New York Times • Jan. 19, 2023
UIC’s prissy bullies, like fanatics generally, have no sense of irony.
From Washington Post • Feb. 11, 2022
Acknowledging this by seeking better language is a basic effort to be polite, not prissy.
From Scientific American • Feb. 20, 2021
The prissy delivery, that thing he does with his mouth that’s less John Wayne than Clara Bow or Claudette Colbert.
From The Guardian • Oct. 15, 2020
She was a figure of romance to them now, where before she had been too neat, too prissy; almost, somehow, too clean to be a real friend.
From "Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbit
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.
