Crossword clues for prig
prig
- Uptight sort
- Prudish type
- Prudish sort
- One on a high horse
- Uptight type
- Strait-laced sort
- Smug one
- Libertine's opposite
- Irritating snob
- Uptight person
- Self-righteous one
- Overly proper type
- Morally smug person
- Stuck-up elitist
- Strait-laced person
- Sanctimonious sort
- Puritanical sort
- Narrow-minded one
- Moralistic sort
- Fussy person
- Vocally virtuous person
- Uptight, stuffy sort
- Too-proper type
- Too-proper person
- Tedious moralist
- Stuffy person
- Stiff-laced one
- Snooty type?
- Self-righteous type
- Self-righteous moralist
- Sanctimonious person
- Relative of a stuffed shirt
- Puritanical type
- Puritanical fellow
- Prudishly proper sort
- Proper sort
- Pointlessly precise person
- Overnice one
- Overly stuffy person
- Overly righteous type
- Overly proper sort
- Overly fussy goody-goody
- Over-fussy and self-righteous type
- Obnoxiously proper sort
- Obnoxiously proper one
- Moralizing sort
- Moralistic type
- Moralistic snoot
- Libertine's antithesis
- Betsey ___ (Dickens character)
- Arrogant, superior sort
- Annoyingly arrogant person
- "Holier than thou" type
- Bluenose
- Hardly a libertine
- Stuffed shirt
- Unlikely Playboy Channel watcher
- Fussy sort
- Puritanical person
- Fussbudget
- Victorian sort
- Mrs. Grundy type
- Unlikely swinger
- A person regarded as arrogant and annoying
- Stuffy chap
- Punctilious one
- Betsey ___, Dickens character
- Nice Nellie
- Smug type
- One annoyingly proper
- Punctilious person
- Stuffy one
- Pompous one
- Dickens's Betsey ___
- Nice Nelly
- Prissy person
- Obnoxiously proper person
- Prude's sister
- Self-righteous person
- Overprecise person
- Precise, proper party pooper
- Self-righteous sort of person
- Smug moralist
- Pompously proper person
- Smug person, greedy one — about right
- Self-righteous guy regularly avoiding porridge
- Sanctimonious type put pressure on doctor
- Narrow-minded person
- Arrogant and annoying person
- Puritan outfit under pressure
- Snooty one
- Persona non grata
- Stuck-up sort
- Prudish person
- Goody two-shoes
- Unpleasant person
- Overly proper one
- Arrogant one
- Stuck-up one
- Holier-than-thou type
- Supercilious one
- Snobbish highbrow
- Stuffy sort
- Prudish one
- Goody two shoes
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Prig \Prig\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Prigged; p. pr. & vb. n. Prigging.] [A modification of prick.] To haggle about the price of a commodity; to bargain hard.
Prig \Prig\, v. t.
To cheapen. [Scot.]
[Perhaps orig., to ride off with. See Prick, v. t.] To filch or steal; as, to prig a handkerchief. [Cant]
Prig \Prig\, n.
-
A pert, conceited, pragmatical fellow.
The queer prig of a doctor.
--Macaulay. A thief; a filcher. [Cant]
--Shak.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"precisian in speech or manners," 1753, originally in reference to theological scruples (1704), of unknown origin; earlier appearances of the same word meaning "dandy, fop" (1670s), "thief" (c.1600; in form prigger recorded from 1560s) could be related, as could thieves' cant prig "a tinker" (1560s).\n\nA p[rig] is wise beyond his years in all the things that do not matter. A p. cracks nuts with a steam hammer: that is, calls in the first principles of morality to decide whether he may, or must, do something of as little importance as drinking a glass of beer. On the whole, one may, perhaps, say that all his different characteristics come from the combination, in varying proportions, of three things
--the desire to do his duty, the belief that he knows better than other people, & blindness to the difference in value between different things.
["anonymous essay," quoted in Fowler, 1926]
\nRelated: Priggery.Wiktionary
Etymology 1 n. 1 A person who demonstrates an exaggerated conformity or propriety, especially in an irritatingly arrogant or smug manner. 2 (context British archaic English) A petty thief or pickpocket. 3 (context archaic English) A conceited dandy; a fop. Etymology 2
vb. 1 (context Scotland English) To haggle or argue over price. 2 (context slang dated English) To filch or steal.
WordNet
Wikipedia
A prig , sometimes spelled prigg, is a person who shows an inordinately zealous approach to matters of form and propriety—especially where the prig has the ability to show superior knowledge to those who do not know the protocol in question. They see little need to consider the feelings or intentions of others, relying instead on established order and rigid rules to resolve all questions.
The prig approaches social interactions with a strong sense of self-righteousness.
Usage examples of "prig".
Rational despotism--that is, selective despotism--is always a curse to mankind, because with that you have the ordinary man misunderstood and misgoverned by some prig who has no brotherly respect for him at all.
Whether I am safely wed to a stuffy old prude of a husband or chained to an equally overbearing prig of a brother.
Stoic, just as he was a prig and a polygamist and several other unpleasant and heathen things.
She was quickest at prigging buckles in the winter, when sliding was the way to get away from the Watch in First Quarter.
Let me tell you this now: you want an infant for prigging with, you take one of my other babies.
It was done by opening his grey eyes rather wide, allowing the corners of his mouth to droop, and assuming a gentle, pleading expression, resembling that of the late little Lord Fauntleroy who must, by the way, be quite old now, and an awful prig.
He continued to be a prig, and at the same time he did not clear himself of the most obscene charge of a crime against one who may have been overprivileged and unlikable, but was still-in memory, at least-a child.
Better Lucas thought her a narrow-minded, straitlaced prig than that he learn the real truth, which was that she was an idiot.
He was a round-faced, nearsighted prig with bad breath, hanging dewlaps, and a sour stomach from too much rich food.
Of course, there would be many answers to such a contention, as, for instance, that the House of Lords is largely no longer a House of Lords, but a House of tradesmen and financiers, or that the bulk of the commonplace nobility do not vote, and so leave the chamber to the prigs and the specialists and the mad old gentlemen with hobbies.
I thought you the most odious, self-satisfied, boresome elderly prig I ever met.
Very kind of him, the stiff-backed prig, with his dandified airs and West-end swagger.
Why, Thomas Chilton, do we want that child made an insufferable little prig?
They would be born so, costarred, puck and prig, the maryboy at Donnybrook Fair, the godolphinglad in the Hoy's Court.
Now, the lay is that we take them sparklers to that flash young boman prig, which is taking cover down here, with a regular green 'un, which he gets to know at Oxford.