(1) Surely the whole point of The Heat's dynamic in the first place is that Sandra Bullock's character is skinny and prissy and uptight and Melissa McCarthy's character is bigger and bolshier and her diametric opposite?
(2) In 12 Years a Slave, however, this reassuring cliche is overthrown, and the relationship between Mistress Epps (Sarah Paulson) and Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) makes a mockery of the one between Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and Prissy (Butterfly McQueen).
(3) He was a Christ-like hobo in Whistle Down The Wind (1961), a draughtsman forced into a shotgun marriage in A Kind Of Loving (1962), a prissy, poetry-reading Englishman in Zorba The Greek (1964), a Bathsheba-adoring shepherd in John Schlesinger's underrated Far From The Madding Crowd (1967).
(4) One in Streatham, a rather prissy one where men weren't allowed to come in [there is a whole section in CIAB on landladies, the horror of].
(5) Poor Mitchell: women – soft, pretty little things – are simply not tough enough for positions of power, and he for one is sick of pandering to their prissy ways.
(6) Cruttenden is a softer soul than Williams, and a heterosexual father-of-two, but he’s afflicted with delicately prissy tones and an impeccably middle-class background, and he mines both to great effect in his accessible, gag-heavy stand-up.
(7) A separate Ifop poll showed 77% of French voters considered the affair between Hollande and actress Julie Gayet – it seems almost prissy to write alleged since neither party has denied it – to be a private matter.
(8) In short, Esther is prissy and meek; hardly an up-to-date feminist role model.
(9) For all that Lily and Linda are strong, Johnson paints himself as over-protected and prissy – a far cry from the chirpy cockney he is usually portrayed as.
(10) Floyd's performances, on or near the stove, were a refreshing departure from the prissy, controlled style then in favour at the BBC, or the alternative mode of half an hour with a French chef whose incomprehensible English made the recipes a mystery.