- 1
A prig is a person who acts as if their morals are better than yours, and who lets you feel it. They keep to the rules — or to the rules they like — and they show that they of the way other people live, talk, dress, or have fun. The word is never a compliment. If you call someone a prig, you are saying they are stiff, small-minded, and too pleased with their own goodness. Though actually, a prig is not always “good” in a deep way: they are often more interested in looking correct than in being kind. It is a rather old, word, more at home in British novels than in the street. Younger speakers more often say self-righteous or judgy for a similar idea. You would not call yourself a prig; other people pin it on you.
道學先生；假正經的人
組成Does not split. UK, 1500s; origin unknown. Earlier it could mean a tinker or a thief — an unwanted person — and that flavour of “someone we look down on” may have fed the later sense “a conceited, moralising person.”
同家族的字
- priggishthe adjective: in the manner of a prig
- priggishnessthe noun for that way of being
原始詞典資料7 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
prignoun/pɹɪɡ/
- 1
A deliberately superior person; a person who demonstrates an exaggerated conformity or propriety, especially in an irritatingly arrogant or smug manner.
- What spruce prig is that?
- I have always had a regard for dunces; — those of my own school-days were amongst the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his beard grew.
- 2
archaicA conceited dandy; a fop.
- A rap now at the door made all resound, / And in two bouncing blowings did rebound, / With two flash-men, a dandy, and a prig', / With whom they had been running of the rig.
- The manner of the scholar had nearly disappeared; still more the manner of the drawing-room young man. A prig would have said that he had lost his culture, and a prude that he had become coarse.
- 3
archaicA tinker.
- These droncken Tynckers, called also Prygges.
- 4
archaicA petty thief or pickpocket.
- Out upon him! Prig, for my life, prig! He haunts / wakes, fairs, and bear-baitings.
- Oh, why didn't he rob some rich old gentleman of all his walables, and go out as a gentleman, and not like a common prig, without no honour nor glory!
prigverb/pɹɪɡ/
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archaicslangTo filch or steal.
- to prig a handkerchief
- Now, this Trailer he bestrides the horse which he priggeth, and saddles and bridles him as orderly as if he were his own, and then carieth him far from the place of his breed, and ther sels him.
- 2
To ride.
- 3
obsoleteTo copulate.
- Wapping thou I know does love, / Else the ruffin cly the mort; / From thy stampers then remove, / Thy drawers, and let's prig in sport.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。