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  1. pious love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Having or exhibiting religious reverence; earnestly compliant in the observance of religion; devout. See Synonyms at religious.
  2. adj. Marked by conspicuous devoutness: a pious and holy observation.
  3. adj. Marked by false devoutness; solemnly hypocritical: a pious fraud.
  4. adj. Devotional: pious readings.
  5. adj. Professing or exhibiting a strict, traditional sense of virtue and morality; high-minded.
  6. adj. Commendable; worthy: a pious effort.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Having or exhibiting due respect and affection for parents or others to whom respect and affection are due; also, pertaining to or consisting in the duties of respect and affection toward parents or others.
  2. Having faith in and reverence for the Supreme Being; actuated by faith in and reverence for God; godly; devout: said of persons.
  3. Dictated by reverence for God; proceeding from piety: said of things: as, pious awe; pious services; pious sorrow.
  4. Practised under the pretense of religion or for a good end: as, pious frauds.
  5. Religious, holy, righteous, saintly. See religion.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Of or pertaining to piety, exhibiting piety, devout, godfearing.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Of or pertaining to piety; exhibiting piety; reverential; dutiful; religious; devout; godly.
  2. adj. Practiced under the pretext of religion; prompted by mistaken piety

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. having or showing or expressing reverence for a deity

Etymologies

  1. From Latin pīus ("pious, dutiful, blessed, kind, devout"), from Proto-Indo-European *pey- (“to adore”). Cognate with Old English fǣle ("faithful, trusty, good; dear, beloved"). More at feal. (Wiktionary)
  2. From Latin pius, dutiful. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “The word pious fits because Republicans really do worship the top 1 percent and the Wall Street tycoons like Romney who manipulate money but don't actually build anything or create net new jobs.”

    The Huffington Post: Mike Lux: So Much for a Quiet Monday Afternoon

  • “Secondly, it is a good example of what I call the pious palimpsest.”

    Old Calabria

  • “If you type in the word 'pious' in Google it now comes up 'pious baloney.”

    NYT > Home Page

  • “-- At last, my mother could no longer bear to see me perplex and vex myself in my fruitless search for the letter, and confessed that while we were talking the preceding day, finding that no arguments or persuasions of hers had had any effect, she had determined on what she called a pious fraud: so, while”

    Tales and Novels — Volume 09

  • “Martita kneeled on the front row with her hands pressed together in pious prayer-like fashion.”

    San Francisco, Ixtacamaxtitlan, part 2

  • “He has long abandoned the belief that one must speak in pious platitudes about doing what the framers intended, or not legislating from the bench.”

    Balkinization

  • “It reached the ears of a certain pious man that there abode in such a town a blacksmith, who could put his hand into the fire and pull out the iron red-hot, without the flames doing him aught of hurt. 482”

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night

  • “In the colony Derré de Gand was known as a pious and charitable man who “sought God in the spirit of truth.””

    Simon & Schuster: Champlain's Dream

  • “He believed in a totalitarian, authoritarian system that rejected universal law, absolute rulers who lied and deceived a foolish mass and use religion, that he called a pious fraud, and politcs that disseminate myths that keep the general population in clueless ignorance.”

    From Nazism to Neo-cons to Bushism

  • “A notion is going abroad that the colleges must be dedicated especially to certain pious creeds, to certain economic beliefs; that the colleges must always speak in a hushed tone for fear the working class should hear them.”

    The Proper Limitations of State Interference

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‘pious’ has been looked up 5230 times, loved by 9 people, added to 60 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 7.