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

Are you as warmhearted as you say you are, or are you just a crusty old prig who wants to watch old empires while eating your chips and seven-bean dip?

From Washington Post ● Mar. 27, 2023

In comparison, Schultz comes off as less of a martinet and more of a prig in the trial transcripts.

From Slate ● Oct. 15, 2020

The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.

From " The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Throughout America’s renewed mania for book banning, I’ve been disappointed that “Rule of the Bone” hasn’t inspired more prigs to start collecting dry sticks.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 8, 2023

There is nothing like her humor, or Shakespeare’s, or Dante’s, or Dickens’s or Dostoyevsky’s, in ancient tragedy or in our young Miltonic prigs who are writing intense novels just now.

From New York Times ● Oct. 21, 2021

When Stiers played Winchester for comedy, his clipped diction and dry delivery made for one of television’s greatest prigs.

From Slate ● Mar. 4, 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

"A most complete and perfect specimen, even in this nation of prigs!"

From The Hillman by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

I crept up to them, thinking what an appetite I'd got, I gloated o'er them lying there elastic and all hot; I thought of butter laid on thick, and then I prigged the lot!

From Humorous Readings and Recitations In prose and verse by Various

I've brought an enamelled mug, because it doesn't break like a teacup, and a little old Britannia metal teapot that I prigged from the attic.

From The Head Girl at the Gables by Angela Brazil

We prigged wi' Tammas no to gang to the manse till we was sure the minister was living.

From The Little Minister by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

W’en I’d prigged enough o’ wipes to pay my fare down, I comed away,—an’ here I am.”

From The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

I prigged it; Simmy here whipped it into pretty Mary's reticule, which she, I suppose, never looked into till the row came; and you claimed it—a regular merry-go-round, eh?

From The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851 by Various

The drying and bleaching linen was an unceasing attraction to rascals like Autolycus, who had a "pugging tooth"—that is, a prigging tooth.

From Old-Time Gardens Newly Set Forth by Alice Morse Earle

All the boys and girls around, Who go out prigging rags and phials, Know Jemmy Catsnatch!!! well, Who lives in a back slum in the Dials.

From A History of the Cries of London Ancient and Modern by Charles Hindley

"Why does she not toddle out on the prigging lay; and her kids also, if they are old enough?" said Nicholas.

From Mysteries of Paris, V3 by Eugène Sue

A walking morte is one unmarried: a doxe, a dell, and a kynchin morte, are all females; and a kynchen co is a young boy not thoroughly instructed in the art of canting and prigging.

From Microcosmography or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters by John Earle

Of posthumous agency in thus picking the pockets of the prigging race, George Barrington's memory must be acquitted.

From The History of Tasmania , Volume II by John West