Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Lack of pudency; shamelessness; immodesty.
  • noun Effrontery; insolence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete Impudence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Impudence.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin impudēntia.

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Examples

  • I confess, indeed, that to compare myself unto him for aught I have yet said, were both impudency and arrogancy.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with - out heresy.

    Love’s Labour ’s Lost 2004

  • Thyades deport themselves in the time of their bacchanalian festivals more shamelessly, or with a so affronted and brazen-faced impudency; because this terrible animal is knit unto, and hath an union with all the chief and most principal parts of the body, as to anatomists is evident.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • Thyades deport themselves in the time of their bacchanalian festivals more shamelessly, or with a so affronted and brazen-faced impudency; because this terrible animal is knit unto, and hath an union with all the chief and most principal parts of the body, as to anatomists is evident.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • It is too high an impudency for anyone to pretend an owning of the gospel, and yet to deny a work of the Holy Ghost in our sanctification; and, therefore, both the old and new Pelagians did and do avow a work of his herein.

    Pneumatologia 1616-1683 1967

  • When at any time thou art offended with any one's impudency, put presently this question to thyself: 'What?

    Meditations Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

  • I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy.

    Act V. Scene I. Love’s Labour’s Lost 1914

  • However, proud scorner, thy whorish impudency may happen hereafter to insist in the derision of these fearful denunciations, and sport thy jester's pen at the speech of my soul, yet take heed least despair be predominant in the day of thy death, and thou instead of calling for mercy to thy Jesus, repeat more oftener to thyself, _Sic morior damnatus ut Judas_!

    A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889

  • The conscience of mankind was seduced or browbeaten by the impudency of self-love.

    Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France Edmund Gosse 1888

  • Puritan women also were not above reproach in regard to the fashion of extravagant hair-dressing; they also "showed the vile note of impudency."

    Customs and Fashions in Old New England Alice Morse Earle 1881

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