priggish

[ prig-ish ]

adjective

1. fussy about trivialities or propriety, especially in a self-righteous or irritating manner:

   At the beginning of the book, Eustace is an unpleasant, unlikable, and priggish character.

   He never softened his message to please genteel tastes or priggish scruples.

Other Words From

• prig·gish·ly adverb
• prig·gish·ness noun
• un·prig·gish adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of priggish¹

prig ¹( def ) + -ish ¹

Example Sentences

Charles Kimbrough, who received an Emmy nomination for playing uptight anchorman Jim Dial on the sitcom “Murphy Brown,” one of many priggish, comically stuffy characters that he humanized for the stage and screen, died Jan. 11 at a hospital in Culver City, Calif. He was 86.

From Washington Post

It was hardly the first role that allowed him to explore fussy or priggish characters.

From New York Times

Woolf, like several other characters in “Run,” is based on a real person; Cocker-Norris, whom Oyelowo renders with an amusingly priggish persnickety-ness, is not.

From Washington Post

Forgetting that he’d ever been way behind the fashion curve, he was appalled, in some priggish, nouveau riche kind of way, that certain passengers appeared in the dining room in slacks and sneakers.

From Literature

A magazine editor — and peer of the realm — once derided the young Queen Elizabeth’s voice as “that of a priggish schoolgirl” and dismissed some of her entourage as “a second-rate lot,” and the writer Malcolm Muggeridge poked fun at the monarchy as an “ersatz religion” and a “royal soap opera.”

From Los Angeles Times