prim

This bold diagonal, cut through the prim Quaker street grid, produced a great many awkwardly shaped blocks, including the pointy trapezoid between the Parkway and the Vine Street Expressway that houses Calder Gardens.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2025

Before each performance, the scene is set by a narrator who speaks in a prim, puritanical accent reminiscent of a bygone era.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2024

Not only are viewers watching boldface names eat, they’re also watching them eat foods that are considered distasteful — which goes against the prim and proper image that celebrities are expected to uphold.

From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2024

A portrait of a prim young lady in bright brushstrokes was being sold for $5,190.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 2, 2023

The word felt like a deception—strangely prim, an antique.

From "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo

The brasher yet primmer Adewunmi speaks in a cosmopolitan London accent, while the quieter but more moan-prone Perkins drawls in a slight Tennessee twang.

From Slate ● Jun. 18, 2018

To hear the "pulpit genius," Dr. Joseph Parker, actors, authors, artists and bohemians pressed into City Temple alongside primmer Victorians.

From Time Magazine Archive

"Be the tarnal primmer, Dandy Duffy, but I see it now!" said the Rouser, struck by Bartle's address, and indignant at the idea of having been overreached by him.

From Fardorougha, The Miser The Works of William Carleton, Volume One by William Carleton

The ladies of Charles II's reign were a little coarser, a little primmer, a good deal more ignorant than those of our age.

From A Century of English Essays An Anthology Ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the Writers of Our Own Time by Ernest Rhys

She was sewing as for dear life, and her face was primmer and colder than ever.

From Chronicles of Avonlea by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

And even the primmest of towns will have their mischief-makers.

From Slate ● May 4, 2026

Into an elegant manse atop the white cliffs of England's south coast ventures Deborah Kerr, beautifully coiffed and dressed for a royal weekend, doing her primmest impersonation of a gentlewoman fallen upon difficult days.

From Time Magazine Archive

You founded a whist-club in Trinity, the primmest college of all.

From A Woman-Hater by Charles Reade

He styled Clare, who talked Baedeker to him in her primmest and most precocious way, Miss Guest; and once at least during the evening he dubbed me plain Bab.

From Laid up in Lavender by Stanley J. Weyman

But these things had been there in the reign of Mr. Meredith's predecessor, when the manse had been the primmest, neatest, and dreariest house in the Glen.

From Rainbow Valley by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

With other thought, mark also the Abbe Maury: his broad bold face; mouth accurately primmed; full eyes, that ray out intelligence, falsehood,—the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find it sophistical.

From The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle

He saw the fine thin lips, like a woman's, primmed in satisfaction.

From The Path of the King by John Buchan

Mrs. Davis asked herself, and then primmed up her unbeautiful mouth.

From Rainbow Valley by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

Her arms were folded, her mouth primmed into an expression of respect, mingled with obstinacy, her whole mind apparently bent up to the solemn interview.

From Old Mortality, Volume 1. by Sir Walter Scott

His lips were primmed so close that his mouth was hardly discernible, and his dark deep eye flashed gleams of holy indignation on the godless set, but particularly on his brother.

From The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

His face was dingy, his lips were grey, From primming sparrowbills day by day; As he turned his boot he heard a noise At his garden-end and he thought, "It's boys."

From Reynard the Fox by John Masefield

Then pulled herself together as the landlady in curled fringe and long grey ulster entered the room, primming long, thin lips.

From The Privet Hedge by J. E. Buckrose

To wind up all, Ellwood, primming up his Mouth, says, "Thou hast found much to tell us, Friend Milton, on Paradise Lost;—now, what hast thou to tell of Paradise Regained?"

From Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary by Anne Manning

"I told Ma that she had on bracelets, and Ma said she feared your cousin was a worldly person," retorted Cecy, primming up her lips.

From What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge

She sat very straight in her chair, eating with the careful gentility of a bird, and primming her thin lips after every mouthful of tea.

From Huntingtower by John Buchan