pudency

[ pyood-n-see ]

noun

1. modesty; bashfulness; shamefacedness.

pudency

/ ˈpjuːdənsɪ /

noun

1. modesty, shame, or prudishness

Word History and Origins

Origin of pudency¹

1605–15; < Late Latin pudentia shame, equivalent to Latin pudent- (stem of pudēns, present participle of pudēre to be ashamed) + -ia -y ³; -ency

Word History and Origins

Origin of pudency¹

C17: from Late Latin pudentia, from Latin pudēre to feel shame

Example Sentences

He scatters words and phrases like “wombbud,” “clitoridian croon,” “total impubescence,” “piercing vagitus,” “rosy pudency.”

From New York Times

While he was exciting his loyal readers with outhouse humor and photos of splay-legged models, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt incited the guardians of public pudency.

From Time Magazine Archive

Meanwhile, the movie, largely because of Fritz's bathtub scene, got an X rating, something of a coup for the animated cartoon, the last bastion of pudency.*

From Time Magazine Archive

There was the same backwardness and hesitancy which in his best days it was hard for him to overcome, so that talking with him was almost like love-making, and his shy, beautiful soul had to be wooed from its bashful pudency like an unschooled maiden.

From Project Gutenberg

Nothing now is left him to live for but his faultless hand and her faultless face—still and full, suggestive of no change in the steady deep-lidded eyes and heavy lovely lips without love or pudency or pity.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• confusion
• contempt
• guilt
• humiliation
• irritation
• remorse
• scandal
• stigma