decorously adv : in a proper and decorous manner; "he pretended to be pleased and applauded decorously" [ant: indecorously]

Decorous \De*co"rous\ (?; 277), a. [L. dec[=o]rus, fr. decor comeliness, beauty; akin to decere. See Decent, and cf. Decorum.] Suitable to a character, or to the time, place, and occasion; marked with decorum; becoming; proper; seemly; befitting; as, a decorous speech; decorous behavior; a decorous dress for a judge. A decorous pretext the war. --Motley. -- De*co"rous*ly, adv. -- De*co"rous*ness, n.

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Decorum (from the Latin: "right, proper") was a principle of classical rhetoric, poetry and theatrical theory that was about the fitness or otherwise of a style to a theatrical subject. The concept of decorum is also applied to prescribed limits of appropriate social behavior within set situations.

In classical rhetoric and poetic theory, decorum designates the appropriateness of style to subject. Both Aristotle (in, for example, his Poetics) and Horace (in his Ars Poetica) discussed the importance of appropriate style in epic, tragedy, comedy, etc. Horace says, for example: "A comic subject is not susceptible of treatment in a tragic style, and similarly the banquet of Thyestes cannot be fitly described in the strains of everyday life or in those that approach the tone of comedy. Let each of these styles be kept to the role properly allotted to it."

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