| One of the main criticisms of political access programmes in decades past was their staidness and conservatism. |
| For occasionally, Hanseatic staidness can strike back with a vengeance, especially when it's a matter of holding on to the all too familiar. |
| There's a kind of staidness and a kind of fear, I suppose, of playfulness, of merriment, of the colloquial and the demotic. |
| Doubtless the trick is to combine dignity with sufficient humour to undermine it whenever staidness threatens. |
| Yet, be it recollected that in all points of staidness, the club has nothing to fear, for its office-bearers are mostly married ladies. |
| She thought only of women of her mother's age and staidness, who wore bonnets. |
