Decency

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being decent; propriety. countable, uncountable

    "Immodest words admit of no defence, / For want of decency is want of sense."

  2. 2
    the quality of being polite and respectable wordnet
  3. 3
    That which is proper or becoming. countable, uncountable

    "Those thousand decencies, that daily flow / From all her words and actions."

  4. 4
    the quality of conforming to standards of propriety and morality wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
moralityaccommodatingnessadvantageadvantageousnessadvisabilityaffability

Example

More examples

"That is beneath ordinary decency."

Etymology

From Latin decentia, from decens. Equivalent to decent + -cy. Compare French décence.

Related phrases

closet of decencycommon decency

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.