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respectability

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Etymology

From respect +‎ -ability.

Pronunciation

Noun

respectability (usually uncountable, plural respectabilities)

  1. The quality of being respectable.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:
      Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: […] it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.
    • 1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 76:
      Though he knew it not, the subtle spirit of vagabondage had taken possession of his soul, and even of his hat, which seemed suddenly to have lost its original respectability, and acquired an air of dissoluteness.
    • 2012 June 19, Phil McNulty, “England 1-0 Ukraine”, in BBC Sport:
      But once again Hodgson's men found a way to get the result they required and there is a real air of respectability about their campaign even though they had to survive a first-half siege from a Ukraine side desperate for the win they needed to progress.
  2. The class of respectable people.

Derived terms

Translations

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