Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use decorum in a sentence

15 example sentences · noun

Decorum means appropriate social behavior. Example: “Decorum and good breeding naturally enjoined that our demeanour should be much as usual, yet I could not help wondering if this self-control were really a matter of great difficulty.”

Examples of decorum by meaning

nounAppropriate social behavior.

  • Decorum and good breeding naturally enjoined that our demeanour should be much as usual, yet I could not help wondering if this self-control were really a matter of great difficulty.1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 57
  • You know, to teach proper social decorum and so on and so forth.2010, Pseudonymous Bosch (pseudonym; Raphael Simon), This Isn't What It Looks Like, ch. 4

More sentences with decorum

  • Fair or not, the players are held to a higher standard of decorum than the loser fans.2022 April 20, A. Sherrod Blakely, “The Neverending Disappointment of Kyrie Irving”, in Bleacher Report. From the entry wild
  • These are acts of disrespect to the king and against the decorum of the court.2001, Islam and the Modern Age, volume 32, page 24. From the entry mahafah
  • It seemed to lump them with Germans against miracle or Swiss against Trinity or ranters against decorum.1966, Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, volume 1, page 174. From the entry high churchman
  • The decorum of Milton’s exquisite scenic adjustments has made possible the comedy.1965, Thomas Kranidas, “Decorum in the Verse”, in The Fierce Equation: A Study of Milton’s Decorum (Studies in English Literature; volume…. From the entry interactment
  • And the comedy will make possible a larger decorum, the very propriety of “natural” in the poem.1965, Thomas Kranidas, “Decorum in the Verse”, in The Fierce Equation: A Study of Milton’s Decorum (Studies in English Literature; volume…. From the entry interactment
  • I never thought Yanks had any rudiments of decorum and laudability about them.1909, O. Henry, “Two Renegades”, in Roads of Destiny, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, page 386. From the entry aggregative
  • Hazard at the clubs and in fashionable society was conducted with all decorum.1901, William Biggs Boulton, The Amusements of Old London, volume I, London: John C. Nimmo, page 139. From the entry hazard
  • The sinister decorum would make you wet your briefs.2010, Robert Trando, Letters Of A Vietnamese Émigré, page 83. From the entry briefs
  • The Saturnalia was apparently the only occasion, however, when the synthesis could be worn in public with decorum.1918, American Philological Association, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, page 132. From the entry synthesis
  • She held their weakness for lions in good-humoured contempt, but played to them her part of the distinguished woman of letters with decorum.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “ch. 4”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC. From the entry lion
  • In contrast, the short-line poetry that flowered in Imagism offers a kind of homogeneity that follows its own set of decorums, tending to exclude other modes.2001, Chris Beyers, A History of Free Verse, page 135. From the entry imagism
  • More and more extravagant and obscene material was being accumulated as if to subvert aesthetic notions of civility and decorum with new ideals of inclusive grotesquery and excess.1992, Richard Brown, “Beginnings”, in James Joyce: A Post-Culturalist Perspective (Macmillan Modern Novelists), Basingstoke, Hampshire…. From the entry gargantuanly
  • In this new world, ruled by charlatans and dominated by demireps, Talleyrand may have found much to shock his sense of decorum, but little to outrage his moral standards.1932, Duff Cooper, Talleyrand, Folio Society, published 2010, page 65. From the entry demirep

Meaning of decorum

  1. noun Appropriate social behavior.
  2. noun A convention of social behavior.

Full definition of decorum

Questions about decorum in a sentence

How do you use decorum in a sentence?
Decorum is used as a noun. For example: “Decorum and good breeding naturally enjoined that our demeanour should be much as usual, yet I could not help wondering if this self-control were really a matter of great difficulty.”
What is a short sentence with decorum?
“The sinister decorum would make you wet your briefs.”
What does decorum mean?
Decorum means appropriate social behavior.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: decorum (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use decorum in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/decorum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.