The Collaborative International Dictionary
Decency \De"cen*cy\, n.; pl. Decencies. [L. decentia, fr. decens: cf. F. d['e]cence. See Decent.]
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The quality or state of being decent, suitable, or becoming, in words or behavior; propriety of form in social intercourse, in actions, or in discourse; proper formality; becoming ceremony; seemliness; hence, freedom from obscenity or indecorum; modesty.
Observances of time, place, and of decency in general.
--Burke.Immodest words admit of no defense, For want of decency is want of sense.
--Roscommon. -
That which is proper or becoming.
The external decencies of worship.
--Atterbury.Those thousand decencies, that daily flow From all her words and actions.
--Milton.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (plural of decency English) 2 The requirements for comfortable living.
Usage examples of "decencies".
But with the fopperies, Julian affected to renounce the decencies of dress.
Above the decencies of her sex and rank, she gloried in the name of his concubine.
People who have come up--by accident, or by their own force, or by the force of some at once shrewd and brutal member of the family--have to be far and long from the slums before they lose the sense that in conforming to the decencies of life they are making absurd effeminate concessions.
In particular, he would have felt that he was committing a gross breach of the proprieties, not to say the decencies, had he introduced a woman of Susan's origin, history and present status to the wives and sisters of his friends.
Because they had never in all their lives known the decencies of life clean lodgings, clean clothing, food fit to eat, leisure and the means of enjoying leisure.
A large blob of foam, which up until that point had been performing sterling service in the cause of the essential decencies, slipped slowly to the floor.
If Abner required a new saw with which to build even the minor decencies of living, he had to hope that some Christian somewhere would send him one.
It was an observance of the decencies for the sake of being able to say duty was done.
Then the thought occurred to him that if he had died in the coach crash which had robbed him of memory, he might have been buried as coldly as this, with no one to mourn, the decencies carried out as a public duty by someone who did not take the time or trouble to learn anything more than his name, who had never known him, and certainly never cared.
Far more suitable to Marquesan sentiment is the old form of poisoning with the fruit of the eva, which offers to the native suicide a cruel but deliberate death, and gives time for those decencies of the last hour, to which he attaches such remarkable importance.