pudency

plural pudencies

1. archaiccountableuncountableModesty.

   1780, Thomas Holcroft, Alwyn, London: Fielding & Walker, Volume I, Letter 4, p. 58, He has no respect to the timidity or pudency of youth or sex, but will say the most discouraging, as well as the rudest things, and receives pleasure in proportion to the pain he communicates.

   3 more examples

   Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain’d And pray’d me oft forbearance; did it with A pudency so rosy the sweet view on’t Might well have warm’d old Saturn […]

   1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene v]

   Maidens laugh and weep; Composure Is the pudency of man.

   1883, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet”, in Poems, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 302

   The youthful artist working in any medium is prone to be impatient of the prejudices of Anglo-Saxon pudency.

   1906, Elizabeth Bisland, chapter 2, in The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, volume I, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 62