respectability
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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This last-minute legitimization would later allow Sand to legally inherit her father’s estate; it also established the uneasy balance between respectability and impropriety that would come to dominate her life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
He desires respectability, but savors the buzz, the camaraderie — the honor among thieves.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026
"The picture they tried to present to the outside world was one of respectability," he said.
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2026
One of Christianity’s deepest convictions is that social standing, respectability and material recognition are not the measures of a life.
From Salon ● Jun. 5, 2026
He was scrupulous about the use of his title because, his investigations being so utterly unscientific, he hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education.
From "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson
His neuroticism, although he learned to control it. left him with a lifelong terror of going beyond the "cleanly respectabilities."
From Time Magazine Archive
Society is not so very exacting, but it revenges itself on people who defy the respectabilities.
From The Eternal City by Sir Hall Caine
To secure such respectabilities in death he passed a most respectable life, a more respectable-looking individual never was seen.
From Isopel Berners The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 by Thomas Seccombe
Because you can't affront the world, because you are bound by its conventionalities and respectabilities, as I am not.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 by Various
Its respectabilities, its orthodoxies, he could no longer abide.
From The Life of John Ruskin by W. G. (William Gershom) Collingwood
