There is a Scotch word so nearly resembling this, and at the same time
so exactly answering to the sense which the passage in _Measure for
Measure_ requires, that it may be worth while calling the attention of
the Shakspearian commentators to it. In Allan Cunningham's Glossary to
Burns, I find _Primsie_, which he defines to mean _demure_, _precise_.
An old Scotch proverb is quoted, in which the word is used:
"A _primsie_ damsel makes a laidlae dame."
The term is evidently connected with, or formed from, the English
_prim_, which has the same sense. It seems this was formerly sometimes
written _prin_. Halliwell cites from Fletcher's poems the lines--
"He looks as gaunt and prin, as he that spent
A tedious twelve years in an eager Lent."
Now if from _prim_ be formed the secondary adjective _primsie_, so from
_prin_ we get _prinsie_ or _prinzie_. But without resorting to the
supposition of the existence of this latter word, it is evident that in
_primzie_, which does or did exist, we have a word answering all the
conditions laid down by Leges for determining the true reading, more
nearly than any other that has been suggested.