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/dˈisənsi/ Listen

noun

Decency n. (pl. decencies)

The quality or state of being decent, suitable, or becoming, in words or behavior; propriety of form in social intercourse, in actions, or in discourse; proper formality; becoming ceremony; seemliness; hence, freedom from obscenity or indecorum; modesty. "Observances of time, place, and of decency in general." "Immodest words admit of no defense, For want of decency is want of sense."

That which is proper or becoming. "The external decencies of worship." "Those thousand decencies, that daily flow From all her words and actions."

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Etymology of 'Decency'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Decency" Quotes from Famous Books

... court-martial; but, within these two days, I am taught to think that equity is to be put out of the question, and the decision of the affair to be put entirely on the strength of party; and, for my own part, I do not see how it is possible, if the least decency or regard for national dignity has place, that it can be called ...

— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... mine has been stolen; I am bound to tell him that he has taken into his house, and has respected and trusted, a thief. There is my plain duty—and I have consented to trifle with it. Are you lost to all sense of decency? Have you no idea of the shame that an honest woman must feel, when she knows that her unworthy silence makes her—for the time at least—the accomplice of your crime? Do you think it was for your sake—not to be hard on You—that I have consented to this intolerable sacrifice? In the instant ...

— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... doing more offices of kindness toward them—so it is affirmed—than we ourselves—who does not see the motive that prompts so much charity, in the good opinion they build up for themselves in those whom they have so much obliged, and who cannot in decency do less afterward than oblige them in turn, by joining their superstitions—superstitions of which they know nothing before they adopt them, and ...

— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... the prediction of my husband," said Dona Modeste. "Liberty, Independence, Decency, Honour, how long will ...

— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... and with a lively disposition, I confess, not to miss even the vaguest of them. I can scarce indeed overstate the vagueness that quite had to attend a great number in presence of the fact that our father, caring for our spiritual decency unspeakably more than for anything else, anything at all that might be or might become ours, would have seemed to regard this cultivation of it as profession and career enough for us, had he but betrayed more interest in our ...

— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

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