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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 This rule of thumb may be a bit outdated; like many behaviors once deemed unbecoming, public primping is unlikely to offend in modern times.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
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
At home, the atmosphere was decorous, curious, gentle; outside, the culture of the nineteen-fifties was tougher, valorizing war and papering over a darker, more furtive kind of violence.
—Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, 25 Jan. 2025
Aside from a series of gruesome martyr scenes frescoed on the interior wall of the second ring in the late 16th century, the décor reflects late Imperial taste for decorous abstraction and costly materials.
—David Laskin, New York Times, 24 Dec. 2024
See All Example Sentences for decorous
Cite this Entry
“Decorous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decorous. Accessed 5 Mar. 2025.
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decorous
adjective
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