priggish, a.
(ˈprɪgɪʃ)
[f. prig n.3 + -ish.]
Having the character of a prig (in various senses).
† 1. Dishonest, thievish. Obs. Cant.
| a 1700 B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Priggish, Thievish. |
† 2. ? Dandyish, dandified; coxcombical. Obs.
| 1702 Steele Funeral iv. (1723) 62 Major General Trim, no, Pox Trim sounds so very short and Priggish—that my Name should be a Monosyllable! 1755 J. Shebbeare Lydia (1769) II. 116 The priggish affection of yon thin old coxcomb, the earl, is so insipid and irksome, that it is intolerable. 1835 Booth Analyt. Dict. Eng. Lang. 59 In common language a Prig is a young Coxcomb, and has the adjective and adverb Priggish and Priggishly. |
3. Precise, particular, conceited, pragmatical.
| 1752 Foote Taste ii. Wks. 1799 I. 21, I adore the simplicity of the antients! How unlike the present, priggish, prick ear'd puppets! 1816 Scott Fam. Let. 22 Nov., The forehead..has not a narrow, peaked, and priggish look..which strongly marks all the ordinary portraits [of Shakspere]. 1836–9 Dickens Sk. Boz, Mr. Minns, He was always exceedingly clean, precise, and tidy; perhaps some⁓what priggish. 1869 Pall Mall G. 7 Jan. 12 There is..no moralizing of that offensively priggish kind which the instinct of boys teaches them to despise and mistrust. 1898 Sir E. Monson in Times 7 Dec. 5/2 At the risk of being branded by that terrible epithet ‘priggish’, which is, I suppose, held in some quarters to be the antithesis of ‘frank’. |
Hence ˈpriggishly adv., ˈpriggishness.
| 1834 Tait's Mag. I. 56/1 For the ‘compliment extern’ of Cockney priggishness and petty intellectual pretension, look at..Lord S―. 1835 [see priggish a. 2]. 1847 Mrs. Gore Castles in Air v, ‘It is with great regret’, said I, as priggishly and consequentially as became an Esquire. 1873 Symonds Grk. Poets viii. 262 The priggishness of upstart science had to Aristophanes the air of insolent irreligion. 1876 Bancroft Hist. U.S. V. lvii. 171 A good secondary officer, priggishly exact in the mechanism of a regiment, but unfit to plan a campaign or lead an army. 1898 Spectator 19 Feb. 268 Priggishness is narrow mindedness, with a turned up nose. |