prissy

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Prim and fussy; too precise; overparticular.

   She was a small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses […]

2. 2
   adj

   Lacking masculine vigor; sissified; effeminate.

   I refused to wear this properly as it looked a bit prissy, so I butchly slung it over one shoulder.

3. 3
   adj

   Well-mannered; well-behaved.

   As women post en masse over the course of the day and long into the night, the mood changes: The daylight crowd tends to be prissier; the night crowd rowdier (and drunker); the late-night crowd surrealistic and unpredictable, made up of the extremely sleep deprived, from mothers of newborns to insomniacs in the midst of a divorce.

4. 4
   noun

   A person who is prissy.

   1970-1975, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure I really like Beau. He sure enjoys being admired & lusted over. He just lays back like a king & enjoys. What a prissy!

5. 5
   adj

   excessively fastidious and easily disgusted

6. 6
   adj

   exaggeratedly proper

7. 7
   name

   A diminutive of the female given name Priscilla.

Etymology

1895, either an alteration of precise, blend of prim + sissy, or a blend of prim + fussy; first attested in a work of American writer Joel Chandler Harris.