Word: prude
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...dissembling, which appears even in their common conversation in which their indirect and dubious answers to the plainest and fairest questions show their suspicions of one another." But the women, added Hamilton, were "for the most part, free and affable as well as pritty. I saw not one prude while I was here...
Helplessness Discouraged. The Weekend authors, who take their avuncular duties seriously, describe hotels and list trains for all college towns. Girls are warned against drinking too much ("No man likes a prude, but it's far worse to have a girl who laps up everything in sight"), and other forms of helplessness ("Don't depend on your host to look up trains"). They are also advised that the paint on Yale Bowl benches rubs off, and that "if you ever want to give a [West Point] plebe anything, bring him food, for he is always hungry...
True, the prewar species of pedagogical prude will insure peace of mind to local citizenry often uneasy at the prospect of women residing in the Yard. Even the introduction of a physical culture course for school marms can scarcely be expected to make Sargent girls out of secondary school teachers...
...stooped with outdoor labor and powerful with outdoor strength. He feels most at ease in overalls but looks just as much at home in city clothes. Integrity and gravity are written in the character lines of his face. He is deeply religious. He does not swear, but, no prude, he does not hesitate to quote other men's oaths. His fiercest epithet, uttered with terrifying inflection about people who drink too much, is: "Dirty bats!" Gus has never tasted liquor...
Thus Christina Stead, author of the widely acclaimed House of All Nations (TIME, June 13, 1938), describes with mordant skill the turmoil within her young heroine, the schoolteacher who seemed such a prude but who alone in her room paraded her nudity in obscenely contrived costumes and prayed to Venus for fulfillment. Less convincing is Author Stead's description of Teresa's attempt to find an answer to her prayers...