pudicity

English

Etymology

From Middle French pudicité, and its source, Latin pudicitia, from pudicus (modest).

Noun

pudicity (countable and uncountable, plural pudicities)

  1. Modesty; chastity. [from 16th c.]
    • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, III.5:
      There are effects, which without impuritie may lose them their pudicitie; and which is more, without their knowledge.
    • 1925, Vladimir Nabokov, ‘A Letter That Never Reached Russia’:
      for we authors in exile are supposed to possess a lofty pudicity of expression [...].
    • 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, Faber & Faber 1992, p. 29:
      I had always suspected him of being in love with Sylvie, but he was a man of great pudicity; when it was once a case of doing a mild psychotherapy on her he passed her over to someone else in order, I thought, not to prejudice his doctor's control: or was it because he did not wish to feel the jealousy caused by his probings?

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