prig

What if I sounded like a moralizing, self-righteous prig?

From Salon ● Dec. 30, 2023

The Professor, Sonia’s father, is a selfish and pompous prig who hates Vanya as much as Vanya hates him.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2023

Of course, when regarded as a 20-something prig squatting rent-free on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s land, Thoreau sounds like the dude you’d least like to be quarantined with.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 6, 2020

He arrived as a scolding prig, criticizing Mr. Odenkirk’s Jimmy even as he relied on him for care.

From New York Times ● Jun. 12, 2017

The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.

From " The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“We are all a bunch of prigs in Washington, after all.”

From Washington Post ● Apr. 25, 2018

At the same time the intellectual elite—particularly the Bloomsbury set—took to ridiculing as prigs and bores the Victorian giants who had built up the economic and moral capital which they lived off.

From Economist ● Oct. 5, 2017

How the prigs managed to nab the labels “correct” and “proper” for their particular form of slang is another matter.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 25, 2016

Purists and prigs might recoil, but if they do, then Mr. Barker will probably feel that he has done his job.

From New York Times ● Jul. 17, 2013

Compared with Oak and Venn, this precious pair of prigs are seen to have only the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees; a righteousness that is of little help in the cruel emergencies of life.

From Essays on Modern Novelists by William Lyon Phelps

"I might have prigged this box of figs," the damsel said good-naturedly, "and you'd never have turned round."

From Burlesques by William Makepeace Thackeray

To-day my Thermos flask in a leather case, in which I carry my lunch, was prigged from the kitchen.

From My War Experiences in Two Continents by Betty Keays-Young Salmon

I have prigged the whole thing from the last Victorian Edition—with some slight variations….

From Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump; Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

"Hallo!" shouted one of those at the cards, "here's Jack Brereton has prigged the ace of hearts."

From Willy Reilly The Works of William Carleton, Volume One by William Carleton

"You don't mean to say that old woman prigged it?" asked Hurd.

From The Opal Serpent by Fergus Hume

The cove was lagged for prigging a   peter with several stretch of dobbin from a drag; the   fellow was transported for stealing a trunk, containing   several yards of ribband, from a waggon.

From 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose

And yet for all this, to be prigging up for an hour, when any of my old chums come to dine with me!

From International Short Stories American by Various

Aha!" quoth Godby the peddler, winking roguish eye, "On the prigging lay perchance, cull, or peradventure the mill-ken?

From Black Bartlemy's Treasure by Jeffery Farnol

There! that's for you brats; just a little taste to give you a relish for prigging; it's a thing you'll take to more kindly if it's made agreeable to you.

From The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 4 of 6 by Eugène Sue

"And instead o' the raging I was prigging for," the soft-hearted maid told her friends, "she gave me a flannel petticoat!"

From Sentimental Tommy The Story of His Boyhood by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie