prig

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a smug, self-righteous person who is excessively proper or disapproving

   He sounded like a prig whenever he lectured his friends about etiquette.

Simplified etymology

Prig is recorded from the mid-16th century, when it meant a tinker or petty thief. It later became a general term for a disliked person and, by the end of the 17th century, referred specifically to someone affectedly precise; from this developed the modern sense of a self-righteous, moralistic person.

Of uncertain origin. Prig appears in sixteenth-century English in senses such as "thief" and "tinker"; by the eighteenth century it could mean a conceited or affected person. The modern sense narrowed to someone irritatingly self-righteous, conventional, or precise.

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