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Antic   /ˈæntɪk/   Listen
noun
Antic  n.  
1.
A buffoon or merry-andrew; one that practices odd gesticulations; the Fool of the old play.
2.
An odd imagery, device, or tracery; a fantastic figure. "Woven with antics and wild imagery."
3.
A grotesque trick; a piece of buffoonery; a caper. "And fraught with antics as the Indian bird That writhes and chatters in her wiry cage."
4.
(Arch.) A grotesque representation. (Obs.)
5.
An antimask. (Obs. or R.) "Performed by knights and ladies of his court In nature of an antic."



adjective
Antic  adj.  
1.
Old; antique. (Zool.) "Lords of antic fame."
2.
Odd; fantastic; fanciful; grotesque; ludicrous. "The antic postures of a merry-andrew." "The Saxons... worshiped many idols, barbarous in name, some monstrous, all antic for shape."



verb
Antic  v. t.  (past & past part. anticked; pres. part. anticking)  To make appear like a buffoon. (Obs.)



Antic  v. i.  (past & past part. anticked; pres. part. anticking)  To perform antics.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Antic" Quotes from Famous Books



... like little children in this respect, that they interest most when they are enacting native peculiarities unconscious of beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt to be entertaining by putting on an antic, and produce disagreeable caricatures which ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high-embowered roof, With antic pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light; There let the pealing organ blow, To the full voiced quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness ...
— Ellen Middleton--A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... the vast courts of the Vatican, seeking for the chapel. We had blundered into the carriage-entrance of the palace; there is an entrance from some point near the front of the church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest antique and antic costume that was ever seen,—a party-colored dress, striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds,—were on duty at the gateways, but suffered us to pass without question. Finally, we reached a large court, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... start. The hare and tortoise are my witnesses. Said tortoise to the swiftest thing that is, 'I'll bet that you'll not reach, so soon as I The tree on yonder hill we spy.' 'So soon! Why, madam, are you frantic?' Replied the creature, with an antic; 'Pray take, your senses to restore, A grain or two of hellebore.'[13] 'Say,' said the tortoise, 'what you will; I dare you to the wager still.' 'Twas done; the stakes were paid, And near the goal tree laid— Of what, is not a question for this place, Nor who it was that judged ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine


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