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PIOUS
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Having or showing or expressing reverence for a deity
Example:
pious readings
Classified under:
Similar:
devotional (relating to worship)
godly; reverent; worshipful (showing great reverence for god)
holier-than-thou; pharisaic; pharisaical; pietistic; pietistical; sanctimonious; self-righteous (excessively or hypocritically pious)
prayerful (disposed to pray or appearing to pray)
Also:
religious (having or showing belief in and reverence for a deity)
sacred (concerned with religion or religious purposes)
virtuous (morally excellent)
unworldly (not concerned with the temporal world or swayed by mundane considerations)
Attribute:
piety; piousness (righteousness by virtue of being pious)
Antonym:
impious (lacking piety or reverence for a god)
Derivation:
piousness (righteousness by virtue of being pious)
Context examples:
And I was a civil, pious boy, and could rattle off my catechism that fast, as you couldn't tell one word from another.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state of my mind.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
In spite of her small vanities, Margaret had a sweet and pious nature, which unconsciously influenced her sisters, especially Jo, who loved her very tenderly, and obeyed her because her advice was so gently given.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful lest her vicious example should contaminate their purity: she has sent her here to be healed, even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to the troubled pool of Bethesda; and, teachers, superintendent, I beg of you not to allow the waters to stagnate round her.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people!
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
A dead silence throughout the room, with a rolling of heads and upturning of eyes, bespoke the pious horror of the community.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
That's what it begun with, but it went further'n that; and so my mother told me, and predicked the whole, she did, the pious woman!
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
I should not allow, said Mr. Spenlow, with an evident increase of pious sentiment, and slowly shaking his head as he poised himself upon his toes and heels alternately, my suitable provision for my child to be influenced by a piece of youthful folly like the present.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
From their pious oasis they looked dreamily out at the desert of life, a place full of stormings and strivings—comfortless, restless, and overshadowed by evil.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
