Word: prig
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...small prig I must have been in those days," muses Q, "conscious of some sublime but undefined mission." When the choir of ancient St. Petroc's Church chanted: "And thou, Child, shall be called the prophet of the highest," Q would blush and drop his eyes. He devoured Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Sir Thomas Browne, Shelley, boy's annuals...
Once, when Father Woollcott came home and kissed his son, little Aleck tried to stab him with a fork. Dressing up in his sister's clothes was his favorite pastime. By the time he went to school, the boy was a weak-eyed, skinny mollycoddle and prig, already "pathetically conscious of being a misfit." He would jeer at anyone who had a squint or a clubfoot; homely girls made him burst into hysterical laughter. He thrilled with the hope of being kidnapped. Charles Dickens and Louisa M. Alcott were his idols. To confidants he showed a collection of photographs...
...Longest Journey Forster despises his hero, Gerald, because Gerald is a prig and a bully. But he gives to Gerald's death "a kind of primitive dignity" by describing the servants who wept: "They had not liked Gerald, but he was a man, they were women, he had died." In A Passage To India, Cyril Fielding, who as a bachelor bravely opposed Anglo-Indian snobbism and narrowness, becomes snobbish and narrow himself when he marries and becomes an official. Dr. Aziz changes from the sensitive, enlightened Indian to an impudent, cocksure babu...
...Knut Toring's Young People's Society and their cooperative commonwealth. Both have high humanitarian motives, but they spring from the same cause that makes Knut a half-baked hero - as bookish boy, as self-righteous editor, as crusading cooperator, Knut is a good deal of a prig...
...prig, Brigham Young founded the Salt Lake Theatre (where Maude Adams first appeared on stage, age 9 months) as one of his first creations; organized the still flourishing Young Men's & Women's Mutual Improvement Associations, whose sessions ended in dances, which were (and are) always opened with prayer. Pioneer Young wanted young Mormons to have their fun in church, not taverns...