prissily


Also found in: Thesaurus.

pris·sy

 (prĭs′ē)
adj. pris·si·er, pris·si·est
Excessively or affectedly prim and proper.

[Perhaps blend of pri(m) and (si)ssy.]

pris′si·ly adv.
pris′si·ness n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adv.1.prissily - in a prissy manner; "the new teacher alienates the children by behaving prissily"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
Mentioned in ?
References in periodicals archive ?
Last week, we made it a point to watch Disney's new animated feature, 'Moana,' in support of its continuing efforts to present young viewers with female lead characters who are strong and proactive, instead of the traditional prettily, prissily and phlegmatically 'princess' types of yore.
Of course there's just diva behaviour with some comics; prissily insisting nobody talks to them and prissily insisting on having an unblocked toilet in the dressing room.
In Something to Die For (1991), Webb's bloodless villain is a defense secretary--a product of Harvard, naturally--who prissily disapproves of the photo of Nathan Bedford Forrest that decorates the office of the elderly Senate majority leader, a Mississippi populist who wants us to tend to our own affairs rather than go abroad to slay dragons.
John Phillip Sousa, complaining towards the end of his life about the new phenomenon of recorded music and the changes he feared it would bring, said rather prissily, "The nightingale's song is delightful because the nightingale herself gives it forth." Sousa was worried that as recordings became more readily available, live musical performance would cease.
(European hiking trails tend to wend through towns and farmlands rather than prissily avoiding them.) In 2003 he accepted an appointment as a commissioner of English Heritage, and in 2007 he became president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
HIS voice prissily spinsterish, his face sprouting wispy tufts of Old Man's Beard, the Archbishop of Canterbury lurches from error to idiocy.
There was no hunting, no shooting, only poor fishing' and he remarks prissily that 'one would have liked to see them more inclined to take advantage of the ample leisure at their disposal by pursuing some one of the studies, historical, scientific, or technical, which belong to their profession'.
"Any prize-seeking gardener will tell you the hardest part of keeping a garden looking good is the lawn," said one prissily.
Its deal with Culina Logistics, would, it said prissily, provide a "wider industry solution for the chilled consolidation marketplace".
To these she added some prissily hung tinsel and an overall swaddling of spun glass called "angel hair."
and the prissily bred middle-class Jews who thought me insufferably rude."
Southwold has taken a bit of stick in the past for being a bit up itself, prissily genteel and indifferent to day-trippers.