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.

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.

Topics