Word.ws English Dictionary

prim

/pɹɪm/

prim adjective: of a person, their manner or appearance: Formal and precise; stiffly decorous.

Adjective

prim (comparative primmer, superlative primmest)

  1. Of a person, their manner or appearance: Formal and precise; stiffly decorous.
    • Philemon was in great Surprize,⁠
      And hardly could believe his Eyes,
      Amaz’d to ſee her look ſo prim;
      And ſhe admir’d as much at him.1708, [Jonathan Swift], “The Metamorphosis of Baucis and Philemon, Burlesqu’d; from the 8th Book of Ovid”, in Baucis and Philemon; a Poem. […], London: […] H. Hills, […], published 1709, →OCLC, page 8
    • God damn it, what does she want of me, this sad, beautiful bridgeplayer of the Fifth Floor, with her air of lost love and her prim carnality?1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy
  2. (broadly) Prudish; straight-laced.
    • He took great joy in the knight's two daughters. The younger was the more beautiful, but so prim she hardly spoke to Goldmund.1968, Ursule Molinaro, transl., Narcissus and Goldmund, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, translation of Narziß und Goldmund by Hermann Hesse, page 105
  3. Of things: Neat; trim.
    • prim regularity

Verb

prim (third-person singular simple present prims, present participle primming, simple past and past participle primmed)

  1. (archaic, intransitive) To make one's expression prim.
  2. (archaic, transitive) To give a prim or demure expression to (one's face, mouth, or (rare) lips).
  3. (archaic, transitive) To dress (one) up affectedly or demurely.

Noun (1)

prim (plural prims)

  1. (archaic, obsolete) A prim person.

Noun (2)

prim

  1. (archaic) privet

Proper noun capitalized: Prim

Prim

  1. A surname.

prim meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

prim in Urdu

درست, صحیح

prim in Bengali

অতিশয় সুশৃঙ্খল, রক্ষণশীল

prim in Malayalam

കൃത്യമായ, യോഗ്യമായ, നല്ലതായ, കണിശമുള്ള

prim in Kannada

ಬಿಂಕ ಬಿಗುಮಾನದ, ವಿನಯಾಡಂಬರದ, ಶ್ರೀಮದ್ಗಾಂಭೀರ್ಯದ, ಅತಿ ಶಿಷ್ಟತನದ

Examples of prim in a sentence

  • Once prim, Edinburgh city centre is a haven for brothels, lap-dancing clubs and strip bars.
  • He still liked the prim eveningful place, except for the Hotel La Grande.
  • But Charlotte, a prim gallerina whose sole aspiration consists of locking down a Wasp husband, remained a bridge to the past.

All 14 example sentences with prim

Forms of prim

Adjective
comparativeprimmer
superlativeprimmest
Verb
third-person singular presentprims
present participleprimming
past participleprimmed
pastprimmed
Noun
pluralprims

Origin of prim

Of uncertain origin. In the verb sense, first appeared in Thomas D'Urfey's A Fool's Preferment in the year 1688. In the noun sense, first appeared in A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew in the year 1699, meaning "prig." Now obsolete. In the adjective sense, first appeared in Sir Richard Steele's The Funeral in the year 1702, meaning "consciously or affectedly strict or precise; stiffly formal and respectable." Oxford English Dictionary proposed a relation with primp and prink. Chiefly Scottish and U.S.

Unknown; see privet.

Words formed from prim

Words that rhyme with prim

35 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about prim

What does prim mean?
Prim means of a person, their manner or appearance: Formal and precise; stiffly decorous.
What is prim in Urdu?
Prim in Urdu is درست, صحیح. See Prim meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is prim?
Prim can be an adjective, a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce prim?
Prim is pronounced /pɹɪm/.

Words near prim in the dictionary

  1. prilling tower
  2. prilling towers
  3. prillion
  4. prills
  5. prilocaine
  6. prim
  7. prim and proper
  8. Prim's algorithm
  9. Prim-Dijkstra algorithm
  10. Prim-Jarník algorithm
  11. prima

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prim (page history and authors); Prim (page history and authors); prim (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); prim (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); prim (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); prim (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “prim.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prim. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.