respectability

In the past, winks at some of the fouler ideas out there was enough to titillate the audience while keeping up the pretense of respectability.

From Salon ● Nov. 2, 2026

The headline notwithstanding, Mr. Posner allowed that “obviously there is a spectrum of respectability here.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

Noah Cross, the archvillain of the movie “Chinatown,” had the definitive line on how old age brings respectability.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026

Gautam Mukhopadhaya, another former Indian ambassador to Myanmar, said Min Aung Hlaing "is trying to acquire greater regional and international respectability as an elected president".

From BBC ● Jun. 2, 2026

Like his lesser satellites, over the years Tom-Carl had assumed an ill-fitting air of respectability and did not care to be reminded of his nefarious beginnings.

From "Go Set a Watchman: A Novel" by Harper Lee

His neuroticism, although he learned to control it. left him with a lifelong terror of going beyond the "cleanly respectabilities."

From Time Magazine Archive

Not Churches, nor creeds, nor rituals, nor respectabilities.

From Humanity in the City by E. H. (Edwin Hubbell) Chapin

It is a sad state of affairs, reached by respectably villainous fathers the world over, when the son demonstrates the mathematical law of progression by becoming a villain without regard for the respectabilities.

From The Quickening by E. M. Ashe

It is not reckless of conduct, but surely enormously reckless of decorum, with its conventions and respectabilities clustering around the status quo.

From The Invisible Censor by Francis Hackett

He was in point of fact the soul of sobriety and the mirror of all the respectabilities in his serious dissenting world.

From Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle by Henry Noel Brailsford