All 11 Uses
pious
in
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
(Edited)
- When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman.
Chpt 7 *pious = highly moral
- A great many times have we poor creatures been nearly perishing with hunger, when food in abundance lay mouldering in the safe and smoke-house, and our pious mistress was aware of the fact; and yet that mistress and her husband would kneel every morning, and pray that God would bless them in basket and store!
Chpt 9pious = self-righteousness (wrongly believing in her moral superiority)
- He made the greatest pretensions to piety.
Chpt 9piety = highly moral behavior
- ...there was a white young man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the instruction of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the New Testament. We met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks, both class-leaders, with many others, came upon us with sticks and other missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet again. Thus ended our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael's.
Chpt 9pious = self-righteous (thought to be highly moral when it is not true)
- Here was a recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same time turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very charitable purpose of taking care of them.
Chpt 9pious = self-righteous (believing themselves to be highly moral when it is not true)
- Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church.
Chpt 9pious = self-righteous (thought to be highly moral when it is not true)
- He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity.
Chpt Appepious = self-righteous (acting as though highly moral when it is not true)
- The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master.
Chpt Appe
- ...the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time.
Chpt Appepious = religious
- It is said to have been drawn, several years before the present anti-slavery agitation began, by a northern Methodist preacher, who, while residing at the south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding morals, manners, and piety, with his own eyes.
Chpt Appe *piety = self-righteous belief (believing one is highly moral when it is not true)
- A PARODY:
Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell
How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,Chpt Appepious = self-righteous (acting as though highly moral when it is not true)
Definitions:
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(1)
(pious as in: a good, pious woman) religious or highly moral
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(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)
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(3)
(pious as in: cling to the pious hope) (describing a hope or wish as) sincere, but highly unlikely
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(4)
(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."