Word.ws English Dictionary

prissy

/ˈpɹɪsi/

prissy adjective: prim and fussy; too precise; overparticular.

Adjective

prissy (comparative prissier, superlative prissiest)

  1. (colloquial) Prim and fussy; too precise; overparticular.
    • She was a small, neat, rather prissy-looking girl with primly smooth brown hair and rimless glasses […]1949, Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister
    • As Nathanial Mayweather, heir to the Mayweather Hotel fortune, Elliott doesn’t disdain the hoi polloi so much as he considers everyone, even the faculty and headmaster at the prissiest private school in existence, to be part of it.2012 March 22, Scott Tobias, “Cabin Boy”, in AV Club
  2. (colloquial, derogatory, usually) Lacking masculine vigor; sissified; effeminate.
    • I refused to wear this properly as it looked a bit prissy, so I butchly slung it over one shoulder.1983, Bill Oddie, Gone Birding, London: Methuen, page 51
    • Mom was always pushing her only daughter to become some kind of prissy feminine beauty.1994, H W Wilson, Joni Richards Bodart, Booktalking the Award Winners - Volume 3, page 31
  3. (colloquial) Well-mannered; well-behaved.
    • As women post en masse over the course of the day and long into the night, the mood changes: The daylight crowd tends to be prissier; the night crowd rowdier (and drunker); the late-night crowd surrealistic and unpredictable, made up of the extremely sleep deprived, from mothers of newborns to...2007, Steven Levy, The Best of Technology Writing 2007, page 48
    • You drive like one of those prissy ladies at lunch who won't take the last cookie in case somebody else wants it.2010, J. D. Robb, Visions In Death, page 19

Noun

prissy (plural prissies)

  1. (colloquial, rare) A person who is prissy.
    • I really like Beau. He sure enjoys being admired & lusted over. He just lays back like a king & enjoys. What a prissy!1970-1975, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure

Proper noun capitalized: Prissy

Prissy

  1. A diminutive of the female given name Priscilla.

prissy meaning in Malayalam

prissy in Malayalam

priggish, prudish, prim
നടപടിക്രമങ്ങൾ മുറുകെപിടിക്കുന്ന, പെരുറ്റത്തിൽ അത്യന്തം ഔപചാരികത്വമുള്ള, ഘനവും ഗൗരവവുമുള്ള, സുവേഷമുള്ള, കൃത്യതയും വേഷച്ചിട്ടയുമുള്ള, ചിട്ടകൾ മുറുകെപ്പിടിക്കുന്ന

Examples of prissy in a sentence

  • A pink can held shaving gel with a prissy, feminine smell.2002, Eileen Wilks, The Loner and the Lady, page 179:
  • Her clothes were not at all unusual or fashionable, a plain slate-blue dress and a magenta cardigan sweater with a somewhat prissy line of pearl buttons down the front.2004, Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel:
  • A healthy trepidation about microbes, lice and the like is the key to a happy prissy lifestyle.2012, Simon Doonan, Gay Men Don't Get Fat:
  • “Boots won't fit,” the man said, “and the hat's prissy.2012, Sheldon Russell, Dreams to Dust:

Forms of prissy

Adjective
comparativeprissier
superlativeprissiest
Noun
pluralprissies

Origin of prissy

1895, either an alteration of precise, blend of prim + sissy, or a blend of prim + fussy; first attested in a work of American writer Joel Chandler Harris.

From Priscilla + -y.

Words formed from prissy

Words that rhyme with prissy

Questions about prissy

What does prissy mean?
Prissy means prim and fussy; too precise; overparticular.
What is prissy in Malayalam?
Prissy in Malayalam is നടപടിക്രമങ്ങൾ മുറുകെപിടിക്കുന്ന, പെരുറ്റത്തിൽ അത്യന്തം ഔപചാരികത്വമുള്ള, ഘനവും ഗൗരവവുമുള്ള. See Prissy meaning in Malayalam.
How do you use prissy in a sentence?
A pink can held shaving gel with a prissy, feminine smell.
What part of speech is prissy?
Prissy can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce prissy?
Prissy is pronounced /ˈpɹɪsi/.

Words near prissy in the dictionary

  1. prissinesses
  2. prissing
  3. prissing around
  4. prisspot
  5. prisspots
  6. prissy
  7. pristane
  8. pristanes
  9. pristanic
  10. pristanic acid
  11. pristanoyl

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prissy (page history and authors); Prissy (page history and authors); prissy (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-prissy.wav.

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