prudish
/ˈpruːdɪʃ
/adjective
Having or revealing a tendency to be easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity; excessively concerned with sexual propriety: the prudish moral climate of the late 19th century...
- My guess is that quite a few parents who don't particularly care about sex in the papers on their own account suddenly develop prudish tendencies when their child reads about it.
- But only the most prudish will have been shocked by the news that Huntington Working Men's Club has finally allowed women into its games room.
- But the family had never been prudish about nudity, Danny, a nurse, explained.
Synonyms
puritanical, puritan, priggish, prim, prim and proper, formal, moralistic, strait-laced, prissy, mimsy, stuffy, niminy-piminy, Victorian, old-maid, old-maidish, schoolmistressy, schoolmarmish, governessy
informal goody-goody, starchy
rare Grundyish
Derivatives
prudishly
- I always turn up to the gym ready to start, and either go home stinky or run prudishly to the showers and change there.
- Surprisingly for a French film of the postwar era, Ne de Pere Iconnu is often prudishly old-fashioned.
- In England, you can ask for 'the bog' if you are in a pub, 'the little boy's room' or 'the girl's room' if you are in prudishly polite company.
prudishness
/ noun ...- The virginal Mina (Cindy Marie Small) is no shrinking violent and is understandably exasperated by the Victorian prudishness of fiancé Jonathan Harker.
- The question for Lovelace, in Clarissa, is whether female virtue is more than prudishness: ‘whether her frost be frost indeed’.
- This prudishness is no doubt a result of my mother's insistence on trotting me out of the house with my vest tucked into my pants on a daily basis until I was about 12 years old.