All 4 Uses of
pious
in
All the King's Men
- The coat was pushed up under the armpits, the hands were crossed piously on the bosom like the hands of a gisant on a tomb in a cathedral, the shirt had pulled up some from its moorings under the belt and the two lowest buttons had come unbuttoned so that a triangular patch of slightly distended stomach was visible—white, with a few coarse dark hairs.
Chpt 2piously = in a religious manner
- There it all was—all of Mortimer Lonzo—the confusion, weakness, piety, self-pity, small-time sharpness, vindictiveness, all of it in the neat, spidery, old-fashioned bookkeeper's sort of hand a little shakier than ordinary perhaps, but with all the t's crossed and the i's dotted.
Chpt 5piety = religious belief
- He had had a beautiful and eager young wife and another man had taken her away from him and had fathered his child, and all he had done was ... and let his intellect bleed away into pious drivel and his strength bleed away into weakness.
Chpt 8 *pious = religious or moral
- And she was that way when she walked out of the place, not leaning on anybody, with the nurse and Katy Maynard trailing along with that look of embarrassed and false piety which people get on their faces when they are caught in the open with the principal mourner at a funeral.
Chpt 10piety = religion or morality
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