Sample sentences for PROPRIETY

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Definition

socially correct or appropriate behavior

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

Propriety was a rigid master, but one that must be obeyed if one wanted to keep a sterling reputation.
Lawana Blackwell
Finally, realizing that I was stretching the bounds of propriety, I rose to my feet and addressed the motley assemblage.
Jim Stovall -- The Ultimate Gift

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

His wife, without any reason... began to disturb the pleasure and propriety of their life.
Leo Tolstoy -- The Death of Ivan Ilych

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

"You may even say, My Lord," replied Athos, who stickled for propriety.
Alexandre Dumas -- The Three Musketeers

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

But Esperanza loved her more for her capricious ways than for her propriety.
Pam Munoz Ryan -- Esperanza Rising

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was especially active during the oral argument, asking me lots of questions about the propriety of correctional staff engaging in medical procedures.
Bryan Stevenson -- Just Mercy

propriety = appropriate behavior

It was up to Call to stop her. He would, I was sure—he and his tight little sense of propriety.
Katherine Paterson -- Jacob Have I Loved

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

I nod, remembering the propriety in Elizabeth's voice.
Kathryn Stockett -- The Help

propriety = social correctness

And what about all his talk of honor and propriety, his disapproval of the female customers, who, after all, were only showing him their feet to get fitted for shoes?
Khaled Hosseini -- A Thousand Splendid Suns

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

"Good points in him, good points in him," said Cousin Raymond; "Heaven forbid I should deny good points in him; but he never had, and he never will have, any sense of the proprieties."
Charles Dickens -- Great Expectations

proprieties = socially correct or appropriate behavior

This act of copulation, fertilization perhaps, which should have been no more to me than a bee is to a flower, had become for me indecorous, an embarrassing breach of propriety, which it hadn't been before.
Margaret Atwood -- The Handmaid's Tale

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed.
Edgar Allan Poe -- The Masque of the Red Death

propriety = socially correct or appropriate behavior

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.
Robert Chapman
Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established.
Confucius
The second thing to aim at is propriety.
Aristotle -- The Poetics of Aristotle
There is no propriety in it—no reason for it.
Henry James -- Washington Square
Folk with less curiosity or more propriety stayed outside, peering through the wide windows and gossiping over what they'd heard.
Patrick Rothfuss -- The Name of the Wind

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