Word.ws English Dictionary

prudify

prudify verb: to make prudish.

Verb

prudify (third-person singular simple present prudifies, present participle prudifying, simple past and past participle prudified)

  1. (rare) To make prudish.
    • Nor was he wrong, as far as regarded Gertrude and himself; Miss Freemantle soon forgetting her strange gallants, their hoped-for proposals, and the anticipated delight of weighing, and calculating and prudifying, previous to the magnanimous finale of rejection.1829, The English in France, volume 1, page 139
    • Of course, what was available to those literates was shaped by a complex of academics, journalizing mandarins, puffing publishers, and alternately propagandistic (read this) and prudifying (don't read that) politics.2003, Bridges, volume 10, numbers 1-4, page 113

Forms of prudify

third-person singular presentprudifies
present participleprudifying
past participleprudified
pastprudified

Origin of prudify

From prude + -ify.

Questions about prudify

What does prudify mean?
Prudify means to make prudish.
What part of speech is prudify?
Prudify is a verb.
What is the past tense of prudify?
The past tense of prudify is prudified.

Words near prudify in the dictionary

  1. prudhomme
  2. prudhommes
  3. prudhommie
  4. prudification
  5. prudifies
  6. prudify
  7. prudifying
  8. prudish
  9. prudishly
  10. prudishness
  11. prudishnesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prudify (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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