(v. i.) To haggle about the price of a commodity; to bargain hard.
(v. t.) To cheapen.
(v. t.) To filch or steal; as, to prig a handkerchief.
(n.) A pert, conceited, pragmatical fellow.
(n.) A thief; a filcher.
Example Sentences:
(1) Today, all those Ralphs and Toms, Percys and Horaces strike us as the most appalling prigs: we have forgotten the world from which they sprang.
(2) He could take the most pitiful souls – his CV was populated almost exclusively by snivelling wretches, insufferable prigs, braggarts and outright bullies – and imbue each of them with a wrenching humanity.
(3) Trierweiler is forever dashing into bathrooms and collapsing while Hollande is an unfeeling prig who either ignores her or tells her to stop being so melodramatic.
(4) Only the stuffiest prig would say "Whom are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
(5) Bovine and equine sera were screened for poliovirus-reactive immunoglobulins (PRIgs) by means of neutralization and precipitation reactions with type 1 poliovirus.
(6) Neutralization and precipitation reactions with six mono-specific antibodies obtained by absorbing antiserum with each of the six different PRIgs-resistant virus mutants revealed that three antibodies were active in precipitation reaction while the others were substantially ineffective.
(7) I wanted to ban puddings from this column completely, but my editor in her wisdom said this was preposterous and that I should stop being such a prig.
(8) On the basis of the results obtained and the findings reported to date, the mechanism of production of PRIgs in bovine and equine sera was discussed.
(9) Bovine serum B1826 and B36 were found to contain such PRIgs from their reactivity to various PRIgs-resistant mutants of type 1 poliovirus origin.
(10) This current of life-giving absurdity electrified them and gave those earnest young prigs the means to change over the years, even after they had become successful.
Smug
Definition:
(a.) Studiously neat or nice, especially in dress; spruce; affectedly precise; smooth and prim.
(v. t.) To make smug, or spruce.
Example Sentences:
(1) "Anne Hathaway at least tried to sing and dance and preen along to the goings on, but Franco seemed distant, uninterested and content to keep his Cheshire-cat-meets-smug smile on display throughout."
(2) What's more, his genial stiffness and shy self-awareness give him a kind of awkward dignity compared to the preening smugness of Cruz.
(3) It might be worth looking at how others do it, and not smugly concluding that the public likes the NHS the way it is.
(4) He is far too astute an analyst of comedy to be unaware of the danger of looking smug and there were sufficient layers of irony and knowing jokes within jokes for the conceit to work.
(5) I smiled smugly – there’s nothing like praise from a kindred spirit.
(6) And he provided the catalyst that improved the lot of the player in what had become an exceedingly smug game.
(7) Our political class is indeed the pinnacle of smug regurgitation.
(8) Meanwhile, eco-triumphalists will witter smugly about how the ban will save - what was it again?
(9) He had to do more than opt out of the yah-boo , smug sixth-form wordplay of the House of Commons.
(10) Dave meanwhile lapsed into his shrill Bullingdon Club persona; the dividing line between self confidence and smugness is gossamer thin for the prime minister.
(11) Before a ferociously red crowd, in which the Australian fans, scattered throughout the stadium in little blobs of yellow, struggled to assert themselves in any meaningful way, the Chileans started with their customary disregard for defence, a line of five attackers purring forward with gushing, almost smug intent.
(12) Softness and tenderness, wistful ironies” he conceded as blindspots, describing Motown as mere “foot fodder” but having a lot of time for relatively minor practitioners such as Joe Tex , who he saw as “hugely smug” but with “great charm and inventiveness”.
(13) The most likely comment to exasperate Serwotka is the assertion that they're fat cats, a smug drain on the public purse: of 301,000 members "we've got 30,000 people earning just above the minimum wage, 100,000 earning less than £15,000 [the average civil service salary is £22,000].
(14) Maurice Vassie Deighton, North Yorkshire • If recent history is anything to go by, then Jeremy Corbyn has every chance of being elected prime minister ( Why smart Tories should not be smug about Corbyn , 27 July).
(15) Among other things, the novels work as a meditation on America's Calvinist conscience, its strengths and blindnesses, and the way that it moved from fanaticism to smugness in the century after the civil war.
(16) It satirises the smug, modernist home-owners often seen in the pages of US interiors magazine Dwell.
(17) This kind of smugness is always given short shrift by the elderly.
(18) Feminism , according to Moran, is "simply the belief that women should be as free as men – however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be.
(19) With incredible complacency, politicians from both sides of parliament basked in the glory and reacted smugly when the US and the eurozone hit a brick wall.
(20) They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism.