as in Victorian
given to or marked by very conservative standards regarding personal behavior or morals
the novel's wildly off base portrayal of 18th-century aristocrats as nice-nelly exemplars of decorum
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in puritan
a person who is greatly concerned with seemly behavior and morality especially regarding sexual matters
some nice nelly bowdlerized this collection of wartime ditties that were lustily sung by the men around the campfire
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for nice-nelly
Adjective
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The Fraud by Zadie Smith With her latest novel, Smith uses a Victorian setting to probe the relationship between England and colonial Jamaica.—
Mia Barzilay Freund,
Vogue,
7 July 2025 -
Old leaky underground pipes are causing a crisis The U.K. has some of the oldest water systems in the world, with parts of the network still dating back to the Victorian era.—
Kurt Knutsson,
FOXNews.com,
7 July 2025
Noun
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The beat-bread-and-fry blueprint is so well-established that even a dab of mustard is a dicey proposition among pork puritans.—
Bradley Hohulin,
IndyStar,
10 Mar. 2025
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Centuries after being burned at the stake, a witch named Jennifer (Veronica Lake) magically reappears and tries to torment the descendant of the puritan who led the charge against her — only to fall in love with him.—
Clark Collis,
EW.com,
18 Oct. 2024
Adjective
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For Max in particular, his parent’s lifelong humorless severity looks more and more like malevolent delusion under a cloak of puritanical righteousness.—
Dennis Harvey,
Variety,
11 July 2025
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At a moment when puritanical forces in this country are actively trying to deny Americans the freedom to be themselves, that’s radical enough.—
Simon Vozick-Levinson,
Rolling Stone,
25 June 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Nice-nelly.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nice-nelly. Accessed 18 Jul. 2025.
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