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The quality of being improper; unfitness or unsuitableness to character, time place, or circumstances; as, improperiety of behavior or manners.

he quality of being allowable; permissibleness; lawfulness; exemption from prohibition or impropriety. South.

e; abashed or confused by guilt, or a conviction or consciousness of some wrong action or impropriety. "I am ashamed to beg." Wyclif. All that forsake thee shall be ashamed. Jer. xvii. 13. I began to be ashamed of sitting idle. Johnson. Enough to make us ashamed of our species. Macaulay. An ashamed person can hardly en…

To reason earnestly with a person on some impropriety of his conduct, representing the wrong he has done or intends, and urging him to make redress or to desist; to remonstrate; -- followed by with. Men expostulate with erring friends; they bring accusations against enemies who have done them a wrong. Jowett (Thuc. ).…

The act of expostulating or reasoning with a person in opposition to some impropriety of conduct; remonstrance; earnest and kindly protest; dissuasion. We must use expostulation kindly. Shak.

Hence, to charge with impropriety; to dishonor; to bring discredit on; to call in question; as, to impeach one's motives or conduct. And doth impeach the freedom of the state. Shak.

Impropriety. [Obs.]

quality or state of being incongruous; want of congruity; unsuitableness; inconsistency; impropriety. The fathers make use of this acknowledgment of the incongruity of images to the Deity, from thence to prove the incongruity of the worship of them. Bp. Stillingfleet.

Want of decorum; impropriety of behavior; that in behavior or manners which violates the established rules of civility, custom, or etiquette; indecorousness.

lity or state of being inexpedient; want of fitness; unsuitableness to the end or object; impropriety; as, the inexpedience of some measures. It is not the rigor but the inexpediency of laws and acts of authority which makes them tyrannical. Paley.

Hazardous; risky; esp., fig., verging upon impropriety; dangerously close to, or suggestive of, what is indecent or of doubtful morality; as, a risqué story. Henry Austin.

A painful sensation excited by a consciousness of guilt or impropriety, or of having done something which injures reputation, or of the exposure of that which nature or modesty prompts us to conceal. HIde, for shame, Romans, your grandsires' images, That blush at their degenerate progeny. Dryden. Have you no modesty, n…

An impropriety or incongruity of language in the combination of words or parts of a sentence; esp., deviation from the idiom of a language or from the rules of syntax. A barbarism may be in one word; a solecism must be of more. Johnson.

A want of niceness; indelicacy; impropriety.