pudicity

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?

Anagrams

• cupidity