as in innocent
free from guilt or blame
the state's lieutenant governor was the only member of the administration who could claim to have remained lily-white during the scandal
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Recent Examples of lily-white
Forced to leave their home in Shreveport, Louisiana, and her civil rights advocacy behind, Charlotte arrives in Derry apprehensive about the lily-white town and unsettling vibes that seem to blanket everything.
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Louis Peitzman, Vulture, 15 Dec. 2025
In the mid-2010s, the movie industry lurched haltingly toward greater representation after social-media campaigns called attention to the overwhelming dominance of lily-white stories and awards shows.
—Andrew R. Chow, Time, 7 Nov. 2025
The broadening Carlile spoke of was evident in the Americanas’ increasing diversity in what was once considered a lily-white genre, as well as the growth of interest among young people for new old souls like Jesse Welles.
—Chris Willman, Variety, 11 Sep. 2025
To the naked eye, the sport’s lily-white facade is deeply pervasive.
—Essence, 17 Oct. 2024
The suburbs have long and deep histories of racial exclusion, creating the lily-white neighborhoods that benefited generations of white families.
—Becky Nicolaides / Made By History, TIME, 15 Aug. 2024
Riding was a lily-white sport there, too, but there wasn’t the same kind of ceiling on what was possible for a Black man.
—Ryan Lenora Brown, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 June 2024
Recent Examples of Synonyms for lily-white
Adjective
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Demonstrators argued that taxpayer money should not be used to harm or kill innocent people and rejected claims that the killing of Good was an act of self-defense.—
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Multiple innocent lives lost due to violence.—
Adjective
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Stefanski certainly isn’t blameless.—
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Del Toro wants to emphasize the contrast between Frankenstein, corrupted by ambition, and his Creature, born blameless.—
Adjective
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Each of them offers money and position but nothing much in the way of pleasure, excitement, intellectual stimulation, or the prospect of anything other than a life of loveless, socially irreproachable tedium possibly brightened by the occasional extramarital affair.—
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Beneath their air of irreproachable authority, Jung and Freud — both brilliantly played, the first with subtlety, the other with theatrical relish — wrestle with petty grievances and insecurities, while the former stubbornly rationalizes his affair with onetime patient Spielrein.—
Adjective
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And how many guiltless prisoners there are here!—
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Many fans found its generally joyous treatment of Miranda’s guiltless affair with Che, a nonbinary comedian, in the first season off-putting.—
Cite this Entry
“Lily-white.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/lily-white. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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