as in puritanism
a tendency to care a great deal about seemly behavior and morals especially in sexual matters
a misguided nice-nellyism prompted the city-owned art museum to cancel its scheduled exhibit on the nude in photography
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for nice-nellyism
Noun
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The anti-pop animus of classic rock criticism reflected nothing so much as a neurotic puritanism, or maybe just a snobbish inability to hear the deep beauty of pop.—
Owen Gleiberman,
Variety,
29 Mar. 2026 -
Inevitably, puritanism is going to come out and come back and go away.—
Ryan Lattanzio,
IndieWire,
27 Nov. 2024
Noun
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During my education, the interwar period in Europe was represented as a renaissance, a cultural rebirth that swept away the staid moralism of the previous century and established an era of artistic invention which kept pace with technological development.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
13 Apr. 2026
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To say anything else, many feminists now argue, would be to infantilize her, to subordinate her—to the state, to moralism—rather than acknowledge her mastery of her own body.—
S. C. Cornell,
New Yorker,
5 Jan. 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Nice-nellyism.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nice-nellyism. Accessed 3 May. 2026.
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