prim

Everything is prim, but the picture’s mood is as weirdly glum as it is exuberant.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025

Miss Higgins, played by Georgie Glen, is the prim surgery receptionist with a poignant family backstory, which revealed her hidden strengths.

From BBC ● Dec. 26, 2024

Before each performance, the scene is set by a narrator who speaks in a prim, puritanical accent reminiscent of a bygone era.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2024

Not only are viewers watching boldface names eat, they’re also watching them eat foods that are considered distasteful — which goes against the prim and proper image that celebrities are expected to uphold.

From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2024

He gave two more prim rings of his handbell.

From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros

The brasher yet primmer Adewunmi speaks in a cosmopolitan London accent, while the quieter but more moan-prone Perkins drawls in a slight Tennessee twang.

From Slate ● Jun. 18, 2018

To hear the "pulpit genius," Dr. Joseph Parker, actors, authors, artists and bohemians pressed into City Temple alongside primmer Victorians.

From Time Magazine Archive

"Be the tarnal primmer, Dandy Duffy, but I see it now!" said the Rouser, struck by Bartle's address, and indignant at the idea of having been overreached by him.

From Fardorougha, The Miser The Works of William Carleton, Volume One by William Carleton

Occasionally the twins, in state, visited Dawes Road, where Henry's mother was a little stouter and Aunt Annie a little thinner and a little primmer, but where nothing else was changed.

From A Great Man A Frolic by Arnold Bennett

Her elder and primmer sister only half liked him.

From A Trooper Galahad by Charles King

And even the primmest of towns will have their mischief-makers.

From Slate ● May 4, 2026

Into an elegant manse atop the white cliffs of England's south coast ventures Deborah Kerr, beautifully coiffed and dressed for a royal weekend, doing her primmest impersonation of a gentlewoman fallen upon difficult days.

From Time Magazine Archive

I took the liberty of going up to tell the young ladies and Mrs. Brough, when Master Peterkin first returned,' said James in his very politest and primmest tone.

From Peterkin by H. R. (Harold Robert) Millar

She was a comely, motherly woman, dressed in the primmest fashion in vogue twenty years before, in England, among the class to which she belonged.

From Curious, if True Strange Tales by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

His wife, she was the primmest thing, as neat as any doll, And looked like one when walking by her husband big and tall.

From The Cornflower, and Other Poems by Jean Blewett

Borso's eyes twinkled, and he primmed his lips.

From Little Novels of Italy by Maurice Henry Hewlett

Her saffron hue, Her thinnish lips, close primmed as they were sewn Up by a milliner, and made water-proof, To guard the fount of wisdom that's within.

From The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 17, No. 495, June 25, 1831 by Various

His lips were primmed so close that his mouth was hardly discernible, and his dark deep eye flashed gleams of holy indignation on the godless set, but particularly on his brother.

From The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

You ought to be 'all primmed up with majestick pride.'

From The Governess by Charles R. Chickering

With other thought, mark also the Abbé Maury; his broad bold face, mouth accurately primmed, full eyes, that ray out intelligence, falsehood,—the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find it sophistical.

From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. VIII by Various

"I told Ma that she had on bracelets, and Ma said she feared your cousin was a worldly person," retorted Cecy, primming up her lips.

From What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge

To wind up all, Ellwood, primming up his Mouth, says, "Thou hast found much to tell us, Friend Milton, on Paradise Lost;—now, what hast thou to tell of Paradise Regained?"

From Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary by Anne Manning

Then pulled herself together as the landlady in curled fringe and long grey ulster entered the room, primming long, thin lips.

From The Privet Hedge by J. E. Buckrose

His face was dingy, his lips were grey, From primming sparrowbills day by day; As he turned his boot he heard a noise At his garden-end and he thought, "It's boys."

From Reynard the Fox by John Masefield

She sat very straight in her chair, eating with the careful gentility of a bird, and primming her thin lips after every mouthful of tea.

From Huntingtower by John Buchan