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Decorous Got Its Start With Etiquette
One of the earliest recorded uses of decorous appears in a book titled The Rules of Civility (1673): “It is not decorous to look in the Glass, to comb, brush, or do any thing of that nature to ourselves, whilst the said person be in the Room.” This rule of thumb may be a bit outdated; like many behaviors once deemed unbecoming, public primping is unlikely to offend in modern times. Though mores shift, decorous lives on to describe timeless courtesies like polite speech, proper attire, and (ahem) covering one’s cough.
Examples of decorous in a Sentence
Rebecca Solnit
august 23, Literary Hub, 23 Aug. 2024
Instead, they are selected and rearranged to form a narrative of gradual debasement: a semantic descent from the decorous to the vulgar, often ending with crude references to the body.
—Jeffrey Weiss, Artforum, 1 May 2025
Aside from a series of gruesome martyr scenes frescoed on the interior wall of the second ring in the late 16th century, the decor reflects late Imperial taste for decorous abstraction and costly materials.
—The New York Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Mar. 2025
Is there any decorous way to acknowledge my failure to do so over the past few years and to express my regret?
—Judith Martin, The Mercury News, 22 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for decorous
Cite this Entry
“Decorous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decorous. Accessed 2 Jul. 2025.
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decorous
adjective
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