respectable

comparative more respectable · superlative most respectable

1. Deserving respect.

   His accomplishments, morals, loyalty, and stature make him a respectable person.

   2 more examples

   In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. In this way all respectable burgesses, down to fifty years ago, spent their evenings.

   1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC

   Don't you find respectable people terribly dull?

   1932, Jules Furthman, Shanghai Express, spoken by Hui Fei (Anna May Wong)

   Synonyms: admirable, laudable, venerable

2. Decent; satisfactory.

   Turn up to the interview wearing something respectable.  She plays a respectable game of chess.  He got a respectable B+ on his last exam.

3. Moderately well-to-do.

plural respectables

1. A person who is respectable.

   The tensions between the "respectables" and the "gay spoilers"

   1978 February 11, Michael Bronski, “The Gayest Parade In Town”, in Gay Community News, volume 5, number 31, page 13

   2 more examples

   They forced their way into the meetings called by the respectables; and the respectables disappeared. It was of their own respectable good pleasure that they withdrew.

   1872, Thomas Cooper, The Life of Thomas Cooper, page 221

   The “respectables”, then, impute to themselves an absence of such character blemishes, or stated in more positive terms, an allegiance to American mainstream morality.

   2014, Mitchell Duneier, Philip Kasinitz, Alexandra Murphy, The Urban Ethnography Reader, page 38