common decency

common decency

Common, everyday courtesy, respect, and politeness that is expected and assumed by social convention. Please have the common decency to at least consult me before you make some extravagant purchase. It is just common decency that you should help someone if they are in distress.
See also: common, decency
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • basic decency
  • decency
  • common thread
  • thread
  • the common touch
  • common touch, the
  • in the Common Era
  • (as) common as an old shoe
  • common as an old shoe
  • common
References in classic literature
I wish you could get Reginald home again on any plausible pretence; he is not at all disposed to leave us, and I have given him as many hints of my father's precarious state of health as common decency will allow me to do in my own house.
In the second place, he knows that my faithful services, rendered through a period of twenty years, to his father and to himself, forbid him, in common decency, to cast me out helpless on the world without a provision for the end of my life.
My esteemed uncle evidently felt that he could not in common decency avoid doing something for his sister's family; and he had done it accordingly in the most malicious and mischievous manner.
The British blood was up; and the British resolution to bet, which successfully defies common decency and common-law from one end of the country to the other, was not to be trifled with.
"The law of Scotland," he went on, "so far as it relates to Irregular Marriages, is an outrage on common decency and common-sense.
'We have much in common--many things--all that the Almighty gave us,' said Mr Haredale; 'and common charity, not to say common sense and common decency, should teach you to refrain from these proceedings.
But before departing, in common decency, I offered to take any wires they might write.
He told himself that he must do that in common decency; he could not leave her by herself in a strange house.
Common decency! They don't know the meanin' of it!"
I like to talk to him, because he's so clever and amusing--I wish Sir Thomas Ashby were half as nice; besides, I must have SOMEBODY to flirt with, and no one else has the sense to come here; and when we go out, mamma won't let me flirt with anybody but Sir Thomas--if he's there; and if he's NOT there, I'm bound hand and foot, for fear somebody should go and make up some exaggerated story, and put it into his head that I'm engaged, or likely to be engaged, to somebody else; or, what is more probable, for fear his nasty old mother should see or hear of my ongoings, and conclude that I'm not a fit wife for her excellent son: as if the said son were not the greatest scamp in Christendom; and as if any woman of common decency were not a world too good for him.'
He was on his feet by this time, but instead of taking his dismissal he remained with trembling, indignant lips, and looking at me hard as though, really, after this, there was nothing for me to do in common decency but to vanish from his outraged sight.
Yet was this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile.
It is common decency and a matter of health and safety for me.
'Regardless of the nature of the collision, whether it was accidental or intentional, common decency and the dictates of humanity require the immediate saving of the crew of the downed Philippine vessel,' he stressed.
No firm should be above common decency, and that includes corporations hosting suicide sites that can tip the distressed over the edge instead of leading them back.