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The Idiot vocabulary
1 fictional people/places/things
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Mrs. Grundy
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tags: [fictional]
► definition
Definition:a stereotypical priggish woman, from a character in Thomas Morton's 1798 play Speed the Plough
► uses
Uses:
For the first time she was overstepping the bounds laid down by that harshest of tyrants, the Mrs. Grundy of the working class.
Jack London. The Game
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Dame. And I assure you, Dame Grundy's butter was quite the crack of the market.
Ash. Be quiet, woolye? aleways ding, dinging Dame Grundy into my ears—what will Mrs. Grundy zay? What will Mrs. Grundy think—Canst thee be quiet, let ur alone, and behave thyzel pratty?
Thomas Morton. Speed the Plough
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Tell them that a dead man may say anything— and Mrs. Grundy will not be angry— ha-ha! You are not laughing?" He looked anxiously around.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Idiot (1887)
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a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it.
James Joyce. Ulysses.
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