Both Uses of
pious
in
Candide
- We had a very pious and humane Iman, who preached an excellent sermon, exhorting them not to kill us all at once.
Chpt 12 *pious = highly religious or moral
- "I grant," said the Senator, "that the second, fourth, and sixth books of his AEneid are excellent, but as for his pious AEneas, his strong Cloanthus, his friend Achates, his little Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his bourgeois Amata, his insipid Lavinia, I think there can be nothing more flat and disagreeable."
Chpt 25
Definitions:
-
(1)
(pious as in: a good, pious woman) religious or highly moral
-
(2)
(pious as in: a pious hypocrite) self-righteous (acting as though one is, or believing one is highly moral when it is not true)
-
(3)
(pious as in: cling to the pious hope) (describing a hope or wish as) sincere, but highly unlikely
-
(4)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, piety can refer to devotion or faithfulness as Proust used it in the book, Swann's Way:
"...but when, as had befallen me, such an anguish possesses one's soul before Love has yet entered into one's life, then it must drift, awaiting Love's coming, vague and free, without precise attachment, at the disposal of one sentiment to-day, of another to-morrow, of filial piety or affection for a comrade."