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More "Coxcomb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bashfulness in company, and believed that it arose from his want of personal vanity; on this account he determined on a journey to Paris, when Paris was the center of politeness; he there learnt to dress, to dance, and to move his hands gracefully in conversation; and returned a most consummate coxcomb. But after a very few years he relapsed into rusticity of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... he was possessed with the rage of increasing the number of his conquests. With this view he frequented public walks, concerts, and assemblies, became remarkably rich and fashionable in his clothes, gave entertainments to the ladies, and was in the utmost hazard of turning out a most egregious coxcomb. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... will express my intense admiration for his wit, general character, and personal appearance. Had he been a stranger to you, I should, of course, have insinuated an opinion that he was a fool, a coxcomb, and the very plainest young man I had ever seen. That is the way of the world,—isn't ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... said. The next one was too tall. "What a flag-pole!" she declared. The next was too short. "What a dumpling!" was her comment. The fourth was too pale, and so she called him "Wall-face." The fifth was too red, and was named "Coxcomb." ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... "Curse on the drunken coxcomb!" said Albert,—"There is a tester for thee, boy, and tell thy master to break his jests on suitable ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... annuals: Amarantus, celosia or coxcomb, cosmos, cotton, Lobelia Erinus, cobea, gourds, ice-plant, sensitive-plant, solanums, torenia, and such things as dahlias, caladiums, and acalypha used for bedding and ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... unkind; it was not in her nature to be that. The mistake was all on my side. I was a conceited coxcomb to think that she could ever care for me; but I did think it, and went on dreaming my foolish castle in the air, until one day it fell to the ground, and left me sitting ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... interference of the lover himself. The French original has infinitely the superiority; the character of the luckless lover is drawn with an exquisitely finer pencil. Lelie is an inconsequential, light-headed, gentleman-like coxcomb, but Sir Martin Marplot is a fool. In the English drama, the author seems to have considered his hero as so thoroughly stupid, that he rewards the address of the intriguing domestic with the hand of the lady. The French author gave no occasion ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... villain helps but for absurd benefits. Mr. Gering might have stayed with Monsieur Iberville in honour and safety at least. And why a coxcomb? You thought different once; and you cannot doubt his bravery. Enemy of our country though he be, I am surely bound to speak him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his garniture, equipment, environment all very dark to us. Probably a too restless, imponderous creature, too much of the Gundling type; structure of him GASEOUS, not solid; Perhaps a little of the coxcomb naturally; much of the sycophant on compulsion,—being sorely jammed into corners, and without elbow-room at all, in this world. Has, for the rest, a recognizable talent for "Magazine writing,"—for Newspaper editing, had ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... spurred, who acquainted the fathers that he was sent by the governor to conduct us to Chaco. This young man was the governor's son, by which means he obtained a command next in authority, upon this island, to his father. He ought to have been kept at school, for he was a vain empty coxcomb, much disliked by the people upon the island. After taking leave of the Jesuits, who, I imagine, were not sorry to be rid of us, after finding their expectations baulked, we set out, having about thirty soldiers on horseback to attend us. We rode about eight miles that night, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted "Corsica Boswell," round his hat; and in short, if you will, lived no day of his life without doing and saying ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... you've nicked it. There's the devil upon devil. Oh, the pride and joy of heart 'twould be to me to have my son and heir resemble such a duke; to have a fleering coxcomb scoff and cry, 'Mr. your son's mighty like his Grace, has just his smile and air of's face.' Then replies another, 'Methinks he has more of the Marquess of such a place about his nose and eyes, though he has my Lord what-d'ye-call's mouth to a tittle.' ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... treacherous, fickle, incapable of considering either the happiness or the reputation of women, theatrical in his ways and language, venal, insolent, ungrateful. Schlegel, though he too had some touch of genius in him, was half pedant, half coxcomb, and full of intellectual and moral faultiness. The rest of her mighty herd of male friends and hangers-on ranged from Mathieu de Montmorency—of whom, in the words of Medora Trevilian it may be said, that he was "only an excellent person"—through respectable savants ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... with fat Friar John!— Monastick Coxcomb! amorous, and gummy; Fill'd with conceit up to his very brim!— He thought his guts and garbage doated on, By a fair Dame, whose Husband was to ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... not a coxcomb. He could not go to this fair woman and ask her if it was really true that she loved him, if she really cared for him, if she held him by a tie contracted in childhood. He could not do it. He had not sufficient vanity. Why ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... Spain."—"Death and hell!" cries the innkeeper, "I will be cut like a cucumber, if this Don Quixote, or Don Devil, has not been hacking my wine skins that stood filled at his bed's head, and this coxcomb has taken the spilt liquor for blood." Then running with the whole company into the room, they found the poor knight in the most ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... don't be angry. I'm only merry because Fiesco is still as much a coxcomb as ever. That's all I wanted to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... his next Addle Criticism, upon my using the word Redeemer will bear the Test; for he that will argue that that word may not be innocently spoken in Temporal Matters, because it is sometimes us'd as a Divine Attribute, will prove himself rather a Coxcomb than a Casuist: And yet for only this poor word the Cat with Nine Tails are up again, and the Inquisitor in a rage cries out, these insolencies are too big for the Correction of a Pen. [Footnote: Collier, p. 198.] Very fine, what horrible correction ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... several Thousand Years old; by examining which you may perfectly discern, how Nature makes a Poet: Another you have taken from a meer Natural, which discovers the Reasons of Nature's Negative in the Case of humane Understanding; what Deprivation of Parts She suffers, in the Composition of a Coxcomb; and with what wonderful Art She prepares a Man to ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... words; "were man's brains ever so stuffed with silk and broadcloth, cut-work, and I wot not what besides! And what could move the Earl of Northumberland to assume for his bosom counsellor, in. matters of death and danger, such a feather-brained coxcomb ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... have paved the way, With your confounded fantasies, to more Immoral conduct by the fancied sway Your system feigns o'er the controlless core Of human hearts, than all the long array Of poets and romancers:—You're a bore, A charlatan, a coxcomb—and have been, At best, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... When coxcomb waiters know their trade, Nor mix their sauces[4] with cookey's; When John's no longer chamber maid, And printed well ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... and confident hopes of myself. If I can hereafter do good to my fellow-creatures as a poet, and as a metaphysician, they will know it; and any other fame than this, I consider as a serious evil, that would only take me from out the number and sympathy of ordinary men, to make a coxcomb of me. As to the inns or hotels at Hamburgh, I should recommend you to some German inn. Wordsworth and I were at the 'Der Wilde Man,' and dirty as it was, I could not find any inn in Germany very much cleaner, except at Lubec. But if you go ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... opporchunitee of purchasing a cawpee of his work. But he knew the name of Pen's novel from the fact that Messrs. Finucane, Bludyer, and other frequenters of the Back Kitchen, spoke of Mr. Pendennis (and not all of them with great friendship; for Bludyer called him a confounded coxcomb, and Hoolan wondered that Doolan did not kick him etc.) by the sobriquet of Walter Lorraine,—and was hence enabled to give Fanny the information ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... motives generally. He had nourished his experience on French novels; he had corrected it by various friendships; he had crowned it with the confession that one could never tell what the sex meant one way or the other. But this fact remained—he was a coxcomb, and, whenever he owned himself puzzled, it was on a single ground only—how seriously was the lady at stake affected by his charms? Feeling, as he did, the infinite inequality that existed between men, and conscious of his own reputation ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner; the proud man's wine so offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the pulvilised, feathered, pert coxcomb, is so disgustful in my nostril that my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... in terms which told me something that I hope above all things, and yet dare not believe, for, God knows, I am no coxcomb, Arabella. He said... but first let me tell you how I was placed. I had gone aboard his ship to demand the instant surrender of your uncle whom he held captive. He laughed at me. Colonel Bishop should be a hostage for his safety. By rashly venturing aboard his ship, I ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... writing out a Piece of Tully for an Opera Tune: Then she burst out, She was exposed, she was deceiv's, she was wronged and abused. The Tea-cup was thrown in the Fire; and without taking Vengeance on her Spouse, she said of me, That I was a pretending Coxcomb, a Medler that knew not what it was to interpose in so nice an Affair as between a Man and his Wife. To which Mr. Freeman; Madam, were I less fond of you than I am, I should not have taken this Way of writing to the SPECTATOR, to inform a Woman whom God and Nature ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the most accomplished persons of the time, being a gentleman, not only of fine learning, but famed for his piety and exemplary life." Dorothy thinks otherwise, and writes of him as "the vainest, impertinent, self-conceited, learned coxcomb that ever yet I saw." Peerages in Dorothy's style would perhaps be unprofitable writing. The "Emperor," as Dorothy calls him in writing to Temple, may feel thankful that his epitaph was in others hands than ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... he had received his commission as an officer. He was much admired in society, and he indulged every whim, even every caprice and every folly, and gave himself airs, but that too was attractive in him. Women went out of their senses over him; men called him a coxcomb, and were secretly jealous of him. He lived, as has been related already, in the same apartments as his brother, whom he loved sincerely, though he was not at all like him. Nikolai Petrovitch was a little lame, he had small, pleasing features of a rather melancholy cast, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... "as it came from the hands of the author," the Journal, in the first issue of 1755, seems to have been considerably "edited." "Mrs. Francis" (the Ryde landlady) is there called "Mrs. Humphrys," and the portrait of the military coxcomb, together with some particulars of Fielding's visit to the Duke of Newcastle, and other details, are wholly omitted.] it is especially interesting as being the last letter written by Fielding of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... the beautiful Claudia was the envy of all the women, the handsome Vincent was not less the envy of all the men present. "Puppy"; "coxcomb"; "Jackanape"; "swell"; "Viscount, indeed! more probably some foreign blackleg or barber"; "It is perfectly ridiculous the manner in which American girls throw themselves under the feet of these titled foreign paupers," were some of the low-breathed blessings bestowed ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... suppose that things, because they may be, are therefore meant at you. The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything of that kind, it is much better not to seem to understand, than to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Lothair thought it quite disgusting, nor could he conceive what they saw in him, what they were talking about or laughing about, for, so far as he had been able to form any opinion on the subject, the prince was a shallow-pated coxcomb without a single quality to charm any woman of sense and spirit. Lothair began to consider how he could pursue his travels, where he should go to, and, when that was settled, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... divine right of my own deep love—of heart which cries out to heart. Do you think there is no magnetic power in true love which can divine the answering love in another? Lesbia, call me an insolent coxcomb if you like, but I know you love me, and that you and I may be utterly happy together. Oh, why—why do you shrink from me, my beloved; why withhold yourself from my arms! Oh, love, let me hold you to my heart—let me seal ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... house. He was answered, that Mr. Mordicai was not at home. His lordship had never seen Mr. Mordicai; but, just then, he saw, walking across the yard, a man, who looked something like a Bond Street coxcomb, but not the least like a gentleman, who called, in the tone of a master, for 'Mr. Mordicai's barouche!' It appeared; and he was stepping into it when Lord Colambre took the liberty of stopping him; and, pointing to the wreck of Mr. ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... recommended to do so, or if you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by lectures on the laws of taste. You recollect the story of Thackeray, provoked, as he was helping himself to strawberries, by a young coxcomb's telling him that "he never took fruit or sweets." "That" replied, or is said to have replied, Thackeray, "is because you are a sot, and a glutton." And the whole science of aesthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by one passage of Goethe's in the end of the 2nd ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... palette, and then laid them on in untempered crudity. And who is not sensible of the vulgarity and coarseness of the account of Boswell? 'If he had not been a great fool he would not have been a great writer ... he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb,' and so forth, in which the shallowness of the analysis of Boswell's character matches the puerile rudeness of the terms. Here again, is a sentence about Montesquieu. 'The English at that time,' Macaulay says of the middle of the eighteenth century, 'considered a Frenchman who ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... mean?' continued Guy, his passion kindling more and more. 'Proofs? I should like to see them! The man is crazy! I to confess! Ha!' as he came towards the end, 'I see it,—I see it. It is Philip, is it, that I have to thank. Meddling coxcomb! I'll make him repent it,' added he, with a grim fierceness of determination. Slandering me to them! And that,'—looking at the words with regard to Amy,—'that passes all. He shall see what it ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cold the coxcomb, and though coarse the boor, Though dulness haunts the rich and pain the poor, In this colossal city, Yet London is not Rome, O Shade!" I said. "A later JUVENAL should not find her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... she is exquisite, George! I have seen nothing like her in my time," lisped a superb coxcomb, attired in a splendid civilian's suit of Pompadour and silver, to a young cornet of the Life Guard who ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the conversation upon the decrease of learning in England, his Lordship mentioned Hermes, by Mr. Harris of Salisbury[1022], as the work of a living authour, for whom he had a great respect. Dr. Johnson said nothing at the time; but when we were in our post-chaise, he told me, he thought Harris 'a coxcomb.' This he said of him, not as a man, but as an authour[1023]; and I give his opinions of men and books, faithfully, whether they agree with my own or not. I do admit, that there always appeared to me something of affectation ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... was yet handsomer than he had been, more set and manly, though still he affected his coxcomb party-coloured dress with the turned-up shoes of which the points were fastened by little golden chains beneath the knee. Still he was a fine man with his roving black eyes, his loose mouth and little pointed beard from which, as from his hair, came an odour of scents. ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... myself,' he said; 'I'm so idle and useless; I wish that were all—I wish myself better, but I'm such a weak coxcomb—a father-confessor might keep me nearer to my duty—some one to scold and exhort me. Perhaps if some charitable lady would take me in hand, something might be ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Le Sage's wonderful novel—one of the masters of Gil Blas, a certain Don Mathias, who got up at midday, and rasped tobacco whilst lolling on the sofa, till the time arrived for dressing and strolling forth to the prado—a thorough Spanish coxcomb highly perfumed, who wrote love-letters to himself bearing the names of noble ladies—brave withal and ever ready to vindicate his honour at the sword's point, provided he was not called out too early of a morning—it was this self-same Don Cordova, who we repeat had ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... woman tells a young man that she is very unhappy, and when the young man is clever, and well dressed, and has fifteen hundred francs lying idle in his pocket, he is sure to think as Eugene said, and he becomes a coxcomb. ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... spite, Their most obliging friends they bite; And, fond to copy human ways, Practise new mischiefs all their days. Thus the dull lad, too tall for school. With travel finishes the fool: Studious of every coxcomb's airs, He gambles, dresses, drinks, and swears; O'er looks with scorn all virtuous arts, For vice is fitted ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... see Mary in her usual nook—the recess by the old harpsichord—and my dear father bringing in this happy letter from your son! I must confess this romantic kind of fancy-sketching makes me feel rather oddly: very unlike what I felt a few months ago, when I was a mere coxcomb—indifferent, unreflecting, unappreciating, and fit for nothing better than to hold pins at my lady's toilet. Well, it is now made evident to me that we never know the blessings bestowed on us until we are separated from the possession ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... syllogisms on the propriety of the liberties which have been taken with his name and standing. But with all his quickness of feeling, his manners were easy and courteous, simply because his nature was warm and kindly, and with all his natural fastidiousness there was nothing of the coxcomb about him. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the cigar itself. Yet, going on to describe a journey to Hastings, sitting "on the roof in front" beside an acquaintance, he says, notwithstanding the enjoyment of dashing along, anecdote and jest going merrily on, "we had the annoyance of a coxcomb perched on the box, infecting the fresh air which Heaven had sent us, with the smoke of his abominable cigar," which looks as if his real objection was to ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... not trace the tale;—nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against his error:—"Oh, murderous coxcomb! What should such a fool Do ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... replied Godeschal. "You give him fine clothes and fine linen, he wears the shirt-fronts of a stockbroker, and so my dainty coxcomb spends his Sundays in the Tuileries, looking out for adventures. What else can you expect? That's youth. He torments me to present him to my sister, where he would see a pretty sort of society!—actresses, ballet-dancers, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... has no shirt-collar, and that what little is visible of his shirt-bosom seems not to be of to-day nor of yesterday,—perhaps not even of the day before. His manner is not very good; nevertheless, he is a coxcomb and a jackanapes. He avers himself a naturalized citizen of America, where he has been tutor in several families of distinction, and has been treated like a son. He left America on account of his health, and came ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Sandwich's help, but only by his good fortune, meeting a man that hath let him have his right for a small matter, about 60l. for which he can every day have 400l. But he tells me my Lord bath lost much honour in standing so long and so much for that coxcomb Pickering, and at last not carrying it for him; but hath his name struck out by the King and Queene themselves after he had been in ever since the Queene's coming. But he tells me he believes that ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... ball-room, it was curled, and then it was full of amatory conquests; and, as he was captain in the Cavalry Volunteers, on field days his hair was straight and lank—martial ardour gave him no time to attend to the fripperies of the coxcomb. These are but small particulars, but such are very important in the character of a great man. With his hair curled, he was jocular, even playful; with it lank, he was a great disciplinarian—had military subordination strong in respect—and the birch gyrated freely; ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... responsible for his remote descendants. Sir John Doddridge, judge of the Court of King's Bench, would have blushed to think that his great-grandnephew was to be a Puritan preacher. With more reason might Dr. Doddridge have blushed to think that his great-grandson was to be a coxcomb. But so it has proved. Twenty years ago Mr. John Doddridge Humphreys gave to the world five octavos of his ancestor's correspondence, which, on the whole, we deem the most eminent instance, in modern times, of editorial ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... of your father's here some time since, a young coxcomb, one Twineall, who informed me concerning your secret sacrifices to the muses, and added, that some of your verses had been greatly admired ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... play'st, thyself thou art; For that by nature fit, No blockhead better suits the part, Than such a coxcomb wit. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... on the Same Epitaph on Peter Staggs Tray's Epitaph On a Stone thrown at a very great Man, etc. A Consolatory StanzaEpigrams by Robert Burns. The Poet's Choice On a celebrated Ruling Elder On John Dove On Andrew Turner On a Scotch Coxcomb On Grizzel Grim On a Wag in Mauchline Epitaph on W—- On a Suicide Epigrams from the German of Lessing. Niger A Nice Point True Nobility To a Liar Mendax The Bad Wife The Dead Miser The Bad Orator The Wise Child Specimen of the Laconic ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Haywood a few months before. There is the same polite conversation, the debate between love and reason, the poem,[8] and the story. But the moral reflections upon tea-tables, the description of Amiana's, where only wit and good humor prevail, and the satirical portraits of a titled coxcomb and a bevy of fine ladies, are all in the manner of the "Tatler." The manuscript novel read by one of the company savors of nothing but Mrs. Haywood, who was evidently unable to slight her favorite theme of passion. Her comment on contemporary ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... face had a witch-like loveliness, as though borrowing its pallor and beauty from the moon, source of all magic and necromancy. Her eyes shone with such luster that, seeking their hue, they held the observer's gaze in mocking languor, and cheated the inquisitive coxcomb of his quest, the while the disdainful lips curved laughingly and so bewildered him, he forgot the customary phrases and stood staring like a nonny. Her footstep fell so light, she was so agile and quick, the superstitious dwarf ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... methodist preacher of the last age, somewhere relates a story of a coxcomb, who told him that he had read over Euclid's Elements of Geometry one afternoon at his tea, only leaving out the A's and B's and crooked lines, which seemed to be intruded ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... money: Son has been at schools, high schools, under tutors, posture-masters; swashes about on those terms, with French ESPRIT in his mouth, and lace ruffles at his wrists; still under thirty; showy enough, sharp enough; considerably a coxcomb, as is still evident. He did transiently get about Friedrich, as we shall see; and hoped to have sold his heart to good purpose there;—was, by and by, employed in slight functions; not found fit for grave ones. In the course of some years, he got a title of Baron; and sold his heart more ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... Falstaff's acquaintance, under the assumed name of Bach, and is obliged to hear an account of the worthy Sire's gallant adventure with his wife and its disagreeable issue. Fluth persuades Falstaff to give him a rendezvous, swearing inwardly to punish the old coxcomb ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... appearing at the assemblies of the Duchesse de Polignac, Her Grace was too sincerely the friend of her Sovereign and benefactress not to perceive the drift of his conduct. She consequently signified to the self-sufficient coxcomb that her assemblies were not open to the public. Being thus shut out from Their Majesties, and, as a natural result, excluded from the most brilliant societies of Paris, De Lauzun, from a most diabolical spirit of revenge, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... plumed Director to the ambassador of Cappadocia. The Imperial ambassador was not in waiting, but they found for Austria a good Judean representation. With great judgment, his Highness, the Grand Duke, had sent the most atheistic coxcomb to be found in Florence, to represent at the bar of impiety the House of Apostolic Majesty, and the descendants of the pious, though high-minded, Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before those grim assassins, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dinner-table, forgot all cleanliness and modesty. Men now, he says, cannot welcome a friend but straight they must be in hand with tobacco. He that refused a pipe in company was accounted peevish and unsociable. 'Yea,' says the royal coxcomb and pedant, 'the mistress cannot in a more mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him out of her fair hand a pipe of tobacco.' The royal reformer (not the most virtuous or cleanly of men) closes his denunciation with this tremendous ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly thus. He who retires from the world will find himself, in reality, deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world. The public is not to be treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be threatened with desertion, in order ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... the author died. With what love do we hang over its pages! What springs of feeling it has opened! Goldsmith's books are influences and friends forever, yet the five thousandth copy was never announced, and Oliver Goldsmith, M. D., often wanted a dinner! Horace Walpole, the coxcomb of literature, smiled at him contemptuously from his gilded carriage. Goldsmith struggled cheerfully with his adverse fate, and died. But then sad mourners, whom he had aided in their affliction, gathered around his ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... so forth, in the true Black-and-White style which is so clear and so familiar. But let us beware of applying to Macaulay himself that tone of exaggeration and laborious antithesis which he so often applied to others. Boswell, he says, was immortal, "because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb." It would be a feeble parody to retort that Macaulay became a great literary power "because he had no philosophy, little subtlety, and a heavy hand." For my part, I am slow to believe that the judgment of the whole English-speaking ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... exclaimed Dona Perfecta, rising suddenly to her feet. "Coxcomb, do you suppose that my daughter ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... no other song-bird that expresses so much self-consciousness and vanity, and comes so near being an ornithological coxcomb. The redbird, the yellowbird, the indigo-bird, the oriole, the cardinal grosbeak, and others, all birds of brilliant plumage and musical ability, seem quite unconscious of self, and neither by tone nor act challenge the admiration of ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Behold the coxcomb Czar,[316] The Autocrat of waltzes[317] and of war! As eager for a plaudit as a realm, And just as fit for flirting as the helm; A Calmuck beauty with a Cossack wit, And generous spirit, when 'tis not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... my sword to Louis XVI., not to involve myself in party intrigues. I therefore decided to "emigrate." Brussels was the headquarters of the most distinguished emigres. There I found my trifling baggage, which had arrived before me. The coxcomb emigres were hateful to me. I was eager to see those like ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... come back. When he has mended what Fluellen calls his 'ploody coxcomb,' he will take out a summons against ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... from London were already conspiring against my quiet. I could scarcely get a kiss from either of my girls, they were in such merciless haste to make their dinner "toilet." My kind and comely wife was actually not to be seen; and her apology, delivered by a coxcomb in silver lace to the full as deep as any in (my rival) the sugar-baker's service, was, that "his lady would have the honour of waiting on me as soon as she was dressed." This was of course the puppy's own version of the message; but its meaning was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... composition, in rhythm, and in a certain quaintness of expression, of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The comic part is spirited and laugh-provoking, yet it consists wholly in the exposure of a braggart coxcomb,—one of the most familiar comic personages of the stage, and quite within the scope of a boyish artist's knowledge of life and power of satirical delineation. On the other hand, there breaks forth everywhere, and in many scenes entirely predominates, a grave moral thoughtfulness, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... or hope again to see in my days At a loss whether it will be better for me to have him die By his many words and no understanding, confound himself Church, where a most insipid young coxcomb preached Clean myself with warm water; my wife will have me Costs me 12d. a kiss after the first Find that now and then a little difference do no hurte Going with her woman to a hot-house to bathe herself Good discourse and counsel from him, which I hope I shall take Great thaw it ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... interesting story illustrative of the practice of carrying one's reading around with one is that which is told of Professor Porson, the Greek scholar. This human monument of learning happened to be travelling in the same coach with a coxcomb who sought to air his pretended learning by quotations from the ancients. At last old ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... complex; its analysis, I fear, may baffle us. It must have seemed to you—as it certainly seemed to Mistress Winthrop—that he made a mock of her; that in truth he was the impudent, fleering coxcomb she pronounced him, and nothing more. Not so. Mock he most certainly did; but his mockery was all aimed to strike himself on the recoil—himself and the sentiments which had sprung to being in his soul, and to which—nameless as he was, pledged ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... hodge-podge; all meats are alike, all are one to a fool. His exercises are commonly divided into four parts, eating and drinking, sleeping and laughing; four things are his chief loves, a bauble and a bell, a coxcomb and a pied-coat. He was begotten in unhappiness, born to no goodness, lives but in beastliness, and dies but in forgetfulness. In sum, he is the shame of nature, the trouble of wit, the charge of charity, and the loss ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... self-inspection, this importance attached to little personalities, disgusts us. The letters of Gleim, Heinse, Jacobi, Johannes Mueller suffice to make us feel fully conscious of this disgust. We should now call the man a coxcomb who considered his precious ego so important that he had to carry on, year in and year out, a yard-long correspondence about himself. General interests have grown, private interests have shriveled up, but thereby, indeed, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... villain!" he cried. "You French coxcomb. You shall pay me for the wrong which you ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ignorance—first, of English authors; second, of the 'Dunciad;'—else he would have known that even Dennis, mad John Dennis, was a much cleverer man than most of those alluded to by Voltaire. Cibber, though slightly a coxcomb, was born a brilliant man. Aaron Hill was so lustrous, that even Pope's venom fell off spontaneously, like rain from the plumage of a pheasant, leaving him to 'mount far upwards with the swans of Thanes'—and, finally, let it not be forgotten, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... conscious of herself—all because he had come into her kitchen! She could not conceal—perhaps she did not wish to conceal—the joy that his near presence inspired. Louis had had few adventures, very few, and this experience was exquisite and wondrous to him. It roused, not the fatuous coxcomb, nor the Lothario, but that in him which was honest and high-spirited. A touch of the male's vanity, not surprising, was to ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... speak to you about this, Lucia," she said. "I do not want to be harsh, but you ought to know what you have done. And, good heavens! for what? A stranger, a mere coxcomb comes in your way, and you listen to his fine words, and straight begin to be able to see nothing but him, though the most faithful, generous heart a girl ever had offered to her is in your very hand! I ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... his tremendous roar and rises, bodily, into the air in his mortal spring, mouth wide open, its crimson cavern glaring, teeth gleaming, eyes blazing, mane erect, paws spread, claws wide, the stoutest heart might well quail. Yet, after barely escaping one lion, this foolhardy coxcomb, this vainglorious madcap, joyously called for another and jauntily despatched him: whatever may be said against Commodus as a man and an Emperor, as an athlete he believed in himself and justified ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... well-filled room, and at one of the tables I espied my quarry in company with St. Auban and Montmedy—the very gentlemen who were to fight beside him that evening—and one Vilmorin, as arrant a coxcomb and poltroon as could be found in France. With my beaver cocked at the back of my head, and a general bearing that for aggressiveness would be hard to surpass, I strode up to their table, and stood for ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... it all, sir,' I said with a gulp, for it was an awful knockdown to a coxcomb of a chap like I was, who had reckoned on the fine feathers and spurs and the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... "Impudent coxcomb!" cries Mrs. Ellison. "I shall know how to keep such fellows at a proper distance for the future—I will tell you, dear madam, all that happened. When I rose in the morning I found the fellow waiting in the entry; and, as you had exprest some regard for ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... delights that wealth could give, of becoming a person of consequence, of making a brilliant marriage. So I read the letters, and contented myself with saying, 'She is very fond of me,' with the indifference of a coxcomb. Even then I was perplexed as to how to extricate myself from this entanglement; I was ashamed of it, and this fact as well as my perplexity led me to be cruel. We begin by wounding the victim, and then ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... An old coxcomb! I wish that I could live to see our hands trempes dans le sang odieux de cette nation infernale, rather than our petits maitres here, in Caca du Dauphin, Boue de Paris, Bile repandue du Comte d'Artois, ou vomis ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... enough for that, thought Caponsacchi, and in this spirit he took the vows. He did his formal duties, and was equally diligent "at his post where beauty and fashion rule"—a fribble and a coxcomb, in short, as he described himself to the judges at the murder-trial. . . . After three or four years of this, he found himself, "in prosecution of his calling," at the theatre one night with fat little Canon Conti, a kinsman of the Franceschini. He was ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... innocence and candor! O father! I loved her, and I, the experienced man of the world, allowed myself to be deceived by that young girl, who knew nothing of the world, and was yet such an accomplished hypocrite! Think not that I was a mere idle coxcomb, arrogantly basing his expectations upon his wishes. No, she deceived me, she disappointed me! You should have seen her at that fete which you gave to the Electoral Prince. How tenderly she leaned upon my arm, as we walked through the greenhouse, with what glowing cheeks, with what ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... she? Ask the son of Job. She's an adulteress. Married but a few weeks ago to the brave old son of Job, her parents' friend, she deceives him with a young coxcomb, the hussy!" ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,—mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... between a French and an English dandy: the first is an impertinent, affected coxcomb, who makes love to every woman as a matter of course—it is his vocation. The second is a cold, contemptuous, conceited creature, intrenched in a double armour of selfishness, blase ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... heiress, once, of Bowdale Hall, A lovely lass, I knew— A Dandy paid his morning call, All dizen'd out to woo. I heard his suit the Coxcomb ply; I heard her answer—"No;" A true love knot he ne'er could tie, Who could ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... a Woman o' Fortune remains unmarry'd, she's a Petty-Queen; Lovers innumerable trace her Steps; each Coxcomb thinks to be the happy Man, and ev'ry were her Presence makes a Court—but when her Reason's once subdu'd by Love, and the fond, foolish Nymph resigns her Pow'r, she's but a meer Appendix to ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... "This coxcomb says he was sent specially by Sir Henry to obtain from you some papers of great moment, which will ensure his immediate release. He bears Sir Henry's signet, and the knave hath no ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... cried, between praying and swearing, "must this alabaster-box of precious ointment be broken upon the head of an infernal coxcomb?" ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... qualities for being the last hope of revolutionary France. One had known him in his early career in the engineers, another had served along with him in Corsica, a third had met him at the court of Portugal; the concurring report being, that he was a coxcomb of the first water, showy but superficial, and though personally brave, sure to be bewildered when he found himself for the first time working the wheels and springs of that puzzling machine, an army in the field. A caustic old ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... coachmaker's, and, obtaining no satisfaction from the underlings, desired to see the head of the house. He was answered, that Mr. Mordicai was not at home. His lordship had never seen Mr. Mordicai; but, just then, he saw, walking across the yard, a man, who looked something like a Bond Street coxcomb, but not the least like a gentleman, who called, in the tone of a master, for 'Mr. Mordicai's barouche!' It appeared; and he was stepping into it when Lord Colambre took the liberty of stopping him; and, pointing to the wreck of Mr. Berryl's curricle, now standing in the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... characters of this play are admirably designed, but not so happily finished as the author meant them to be—witness, Bob Handy, who begins a self-conceited coxcomb, and ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... never cured; it was the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, were never rectified: once a coxcomb, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... the most interesting and impressive localities in the Rockies lies around Mt. Wetterhorn, Mt. Coxcomb, and Uncompahgre Peak. Here I have found the birds confiding, and most wild animals so tame that it was a joy to be with them. But this was years ago, and now most of the wild animals are wilder and the birds have found that man will not bear acquaintance. ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... appreciating them so keenly, for liking them so much. It must be, I felt with far less consciousness than my formulation of the feeling expresses, that I was of some finer sort myself to be able to enjoy such a fine sort. No doubt I should have been a coxcomb of some kind, if not that kind, and I shall not be very strenuous in censuring Thackeray for his effect upon me in this way. No doubt the effect was already in me, and he did not so much produce it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a little package, and, with preter-careful hands, dropped a long white mantle over the shoulders of the ministerial coxcomb. Is light folds closed around him, and, with an Olympian nod, he turned toward the door, while the valet flew to open it. As soon as the count appeared, the other valets, who, with the hair-dresser, stood on either side of the room, raised each one a long brush dipped in hair-powder, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... people, some take their disappointment and meekly bear it. Some hate and hold you their enemy because you could not be their friend. Some, furious and envious, say: "Who is this man who refuses what I offer, and how dares he, the conceited coxcomb, to ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fervor Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance? Dear, dear, what have I said? but, alas, just now, like Iago, I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly; So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exaltation, Here in the Garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker That the works of his hand are all very good: his creatures, Beast of the field and fowl, he brings them before me; I name them; That which I name them, they are,—the bird, the beast, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... directly he had received his commission as an officer. He was much admired in society, and he indulged every whim, even every caprice and every folly, and gave himself airs, but that too was attractive in him. Women went out of their senses over him; men called him a coxcomb, and were secretly jealous of him. He lived, as has been related already, in the same apartments as his brother, whom he loved sincerely, though he was not at all like him. Nikolai Petrovitch was a little lame, he had small, pleasing features of a rather melancholy ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... a new peace may be relied on during the throes of a bloody war, to tranquillize its wounds. Consequently, when the arrogant Louvois carried a war to the credit of his own little account on the national leger of France, this coxcomb well knew that a war was at any rate due about that time. Really, says he, I must find out some little war to exhaust the surplus irritability of this person, or he'll be the death of me. But irritable or not irritable, with a puppy ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... coxcomb," he muttered. "Does he think that being 'top-shearer' gives him a right to make love ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... foreigner," than to the cigar itself. Yet, going on to describe a journey to Hastings, sitting "on the roof in front" beside an acquaintance, he says, notwithstanding the enjoyment of dashing along, anecdote and jest going merrily on, "we had the annoyance of a coxcomb perched on the box, infecting the fresh air which Heaven had sent us, with the smoke of his abominable cigar," which looks as if his real objection ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... "You do well to draw back You are wise to avoid discomfiture. This lady is not for you. When she is won, it will be by some bold and gallant gentleman, and by no mincing squire of dames, no courtly coxcomb, no fop of the Luxembourg, be his experiences of ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... lover himself. The French original has infinitely the superiority; the character of the luckless lover is drawn with an exquisitely finer pencil. Lelie is an inconsequential, light-headed, gentleman-like coxcomb, but Sir Martin Marplot is a fool. In the English drama, the author seems to have considered his hero as so thoroughly stupid, that he rewards the address of the intriguing domestic with the hand of the lady. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Lindsey ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... blows that their efforts soon made a visible diversion in Lord Cadurcis' favour. It is difficult, indeed, to convey an idea of the exertions and achievements of Captain Cadurcis; no Paladin of chivalry ever executed such marvels on a swarm of Paynim slaves; and many a bloody coxcomb and broken limb bore witness in Petty France that night to his achievements. Still the mob struggled and were not daunted by the delay in immolating their victim. As long as they had only to fight against men in plain clothes, they were valorous and obstinate enough; but the moment that the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... fellows went away dreadfully mortified. The unbeliever paid the bet, but he was deeply vexed, called the other a coxcomb, and a week afterwards killed him ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to give me any serious reasons for having fooled me for a month, I left her in a huff. Fash. Well, well, I'll answer for it she'll soon resume her power, especially as friendship will prevent your pursuing the other too far.—But my coxcomb of a brother is an admirer of Amanda's too, is he? Col. Town. Yes, and I believe is most heartily despised by her. But come with me, and you shall see her and your old friend Loveless. Fash. I must pay ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... he that loves her best, Durst offer but to touch her in this place! Per Jovem et Junonem! hoc Shall pash his coxcomb such a knock, As that his soul his course shall take To Limbo and Avernus' lake. In vain I watch in this dark hole; Would any living durst my manhood try, And offer to come up the stairs ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... to the time of his matriculation in Chaussee d'Antin, was a romantic-looking sloven. From this to a very dashing coxcomb is but half a step, and, to be rid of the coxcombry and retain a look of fashion, is still within the easy limits of imitation. But—to obtain superiority of presence, with no apparent aid from dress ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... and exchanged some pushes. Seymour was wounded in the neck. The wound was not very serious; but, when his cure was only half completed, he revelled in fruit, ice and Burgundy till he threw himself into a violent fever. Though a coxcomb and a voluptuary, he seems to have had some fine qualities. On the last day of his life he saw Kirke. Kirke implored forgiveness; and the dying man declared that he forgave as he hoped to be forgiven. There ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... threw over the part an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that it was upon an elevation. He was magnificent from the outset; but when the decent sobrieties of the character ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... whatever would yield him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted "Corsica Boswell," round his hat; and in short, if you will, lived no day of his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... then it was full of amatory conquests; and, as he was captain in the Cavalry Volunteers, on field days his hair was straight and lank—martial ardour gave him no time to attend to the fripperies of the coxcomb. These are but small particulars, but such are very important in the character of a great man. With his hair curled, he was jocular, even playful; with it lank, he was a great disciplinarian—had military subordination ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... on the Somme, Buckingham ever at the Queen's side. Anne of Austria was attended by her Mistress of the Household, the beautiful, witty Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse, and by her equerry, Monsieur de Putange. Madame de Chevreuse had for cavalier that handsome coxcomb, Lord Holland, who was one of Buckingham's creatures, between whom and herself a certain transient tenderness had sprung up. M. de Putange was accompanied by Madame de Vernet, with whom at the time he was over head ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... fop, fine gentleman; swell; dandy, dandiprat|!; exquisite, coxcomb, beau, macaroni, blade, blood, buck, man about town, fast man; fribble, milliner|!; Jemmy Jessamy|!, carpet knight; masher, dude. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... on one corner of the table, and her face had a witch-like loveliness, as though borrowing its pallor and beauty from the moon, source of all magic and necromancy. Her eyes shone with such luster that, seeking their hue, they held the observer's gaze in mocking languor, and cheated the inquisitive coxcomb of his quest, the while the disdainful lips curved laughingly and so bewildered him, he forgot the customary phrases and stood staring like a nonny. Her footstep fell so light, she was so agile and quick, the superstitious dwarf swore she was but ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... his own genius, and in a very amiable frame of mind, altogether. In this mood, he joined the family at dinner; after which meal, a few glasses of brandy added fire to the smouldering element within him, and straightway he blazed forth: a gallant, a coxcomb. In this frame of mind, he always admired himself excessively, took stock of his burly legs and brawny shoulders, and smiled sentimentally before the mirror, at ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Colonel Brereton,—the beau of my family. Look at him there! Wouldst think the coxcomb was in the charge ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... critic; but his theories were strongly opposed and he was continually in hot water. In his zeal to defend Turner or Millais or Burne-Jones he was rather slashing in his criticism of other artists. The libel suit brought against him by Whistler, whom he described as a coxcomb who flung a pot of paint in the face of the public, is still talked about in England. The jury (fancy a jury wrestling with a question of art!) found Ruskin guilty, and decided that he should pay for the artist's damaged reputation the sum of ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... back. When he has mended what Fluellen calls his 'ploody coxcomb,' he will take out a summons against ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... moonlight glade, having in front the reverend, though ruinous chapel, and the rude hermitage, so well suited to ascetic devotion, Wamba whispered to Gurth, "If this be the habitation of a thief, it makes good the old proverb, The nearer the church the farther from God.—And by my coxcomb," he added, "I think it be even so—Hearken but to the black sanctus which they are singing in ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... was extremely complex; its analysis, I fear, may baffle us. It must have seemed to you—as it certainly seemed to Mistress Winthrop—that he made a mock of her; that in truth he was the impudent, fleering coxcomb she pronounced him, and nothing more. Not so. Mock he most certainly did; but his mockery was all aimed to strike himself on the recoil—himself and the sentiments which had sprung to being in his soul, and to which—nameless ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... upon the point of speaking his mind, but managed to check himself in time. Harkness's personality rasped him to the raw, and he had for days struggled against an utterly absurd but insistent desire to seize the little coxcomb by the throat and squeeze the arrogance out of him as juice is squeezed out of a lemon. There is flesh for which one's ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the coxcomb Czar,[316] The Autocrat of waltzes[317] and of war! As eager for a plaudit as a realm, And just as fit for flirting as the helm; A Calmuck beauty with a Cossack wit, And generous spirit, when 'tis not frost-bit; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... John Lockhart. We stopped at Allanton to see a tree transplanted, which was performed with great ease. Sir Henry is a sad coxcomb, and lifted beyond the solid earth by the effect of his book's success. But the book well deserves it.[240] He is in practice particularly anxious to keep the roots of the tree near the surface, and only covers them with about ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Lennox looked to-day," said she, addressing Mary; "and how perfectly unconscious, at least indifferent, he seems about it. It is quite refreshing to see a handsome man that is neither a fool nor a coxcomb." ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... is the difference between a French and an English dandy: the first is an impertinent, affected coxcomb, who makes love to every woman as a matter of course—it is his vocation. The second is a cold, contemptuous, conceited creature, intrenched in a double armour of selfishness, blase upon ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... acquaintance, and—at the club, let us say prefer the company of a lively, handsome, well-dressed, gentleman like young man, who amuses me, to that of a slouching, ill-washed, misanthropic H-murderer, a ceaselessly prating coxcomb, or what not; has not society—the aggregate you and I—a right to the same choice? Harry was liked because he was likeable; because he was rich, handsome, jovial, well-born, well-bred, brave; because, with jolly topers, he liked a jolly song and a bottle; because, with gentlemen sportsmen, he loved ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dinner I went in one of the boats with my boy before my Lord, and made shift before night to get my cabin in pretty good order. It is but little, but very convenient, having one window to the sea and another to the deck, and a good bed. This morning comes Mr. Ed. Pickering, like a coxcomb as he always was. He tells me that the King will come in, but that Monk did resolve to have the doing of it himself, or else ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,—mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden leg, and ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... serjeant-at-law and a member of parliament.' After which he repeated the lines that concerned him with great emphasis; said 'I was mistaken in one thing, for he assured me he was no booby, but owned himself to be a coxcomb.' However, that being a point of controversy wherein I had no concern, I let it drop. As to the verses, he insisted, 'that by his taste and skill in poetry he was as sure I wrote them as if he had seen them ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... to shake, ("A. S. sceac-an, to shake, or shock, or shog.") Shog has nothing whatever to do with shaking, unless when Nym says to Pistol, "Will you shog off?" he may be said to have shaken him off. When the Tinker in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Coxcomb" says, "Come, prithee, let's shog off," what possible allusion to shaking is there, except, perhaps, to "shaking stumps"? The first jog and shog are identical in meaning and derivation, and may be traced, by whosoever ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... always conquered when she called him "Captain Anerley." He took it to point at him as a pretender, a coxcomb fond of titles, a would-be officer who took good care to hold aloof from fighting. And he knew in his heart that he loved to be called "Captain Anerley" by every one who ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and inexperience make her more attractive? I am not sure, even, that they do not balance her self-reliance and independence, which certainly repel me. All this I did not dream of at first. I am not a scoundrel or a coxcomb. It came to me the other afternoon all at once, when she threw her arms about my neck. I have been selfish, and perhaps stupid. "Why not marry her?" you say. I have asked myself that question, and this is my answer: No passion in the world ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... for beer," cried the major radiantly. "Bedad, it's just the time for a quart of fourpinny. I remimber ould Gilder, when he was our chief in India, used to say that a man who got beyond enjoying beer and a clay pipe at a pinch was either an ass or a coxcomb. He smoked a clay at the mess table himself. Draper, who commanded the division, told him it was unsoldier-like. 'Unsoldier-like be demned,' he said. Ged, they nearly court-martialled the ould man for it. He got the V.C. at ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stages of man's life during both eras are here contrasted in every gradation. Thus we have the child as he was, the child as he is, commencing his education, and his entry into manhood; the coxcomb and dissipated man of former times, and the man of the present era, following the road leading to his own happiness and the good of others; middle age—the man struggling to draw the load up the hill with painful efforts, the other ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... governments might be disliked, neither the Austrian soldier, nor the Prussian, nor even the Russian, made himself abhorred, employed his study in vexing the feelings of the people, had a perpetual sneer on his visage, or exhibited in his habits a perpetual affectation of that coxcomb superiority to all other human beings, that pert supremacy, that grotesque and yet irritating caricature, which makes the Moi, je suis Francais, a demand for universal adoration, the concentrated essence of absurdity, the poison-drop ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... hardly showed any real intimacy between them. And it was easy to see where the real authority lay. As for himself he had lately begun to ask himself seriously how much he was interested in Pamela. For in truth, though he was no coxcomb, he could not help seeing—all the more because of Pamela's variable moods towards him—that she was at least incipiently interested in him. If so, was it fair to her that they should correspond?—and that he ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ladies' maids, who thought themselves far handsomer, and saw themselves infinitely better clad, and wondered how people could be so vulgar. A shuddering came over Emilius; he looked round for Roderick, but the latter had already run away from him again. An impertinent coxcomb, with a head pilloried in his high starched neck-cloth, a servant to one of the visitors, eager to show his wit, pressed up to Emilius, giggling, and cried: 'Now, your honour, what says your honour to this grand couple? They can neither of them ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... great man, flattery and envy are killing you; if you be poor, every one is trampling upon and despising you; after having become an inventor, if you exalt your head and seek for praise, you will be called a boaster and a coxcomb; if you lead a godly life and resort to the church and the altar, you will be called a hypocrite; if you do not, then you are an infidel or a heretic; if you be merry, you will be called a buffoon; if you are ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... accidents will happen,— suppose he makes a false step: down he comes on the middle of the stage, and the audience roars with laughter. For there is his mask, crumpled up, diadem and all, and his own bloody coxcomb showing underneath it; his legs are laid bare to the knees, and you see the dirty rags inside his fine robe, and the great lumbering buskins. Ha, ha, friend cock, have I learnt to turn a simile already? Well, there are my views on ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... "Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London," published in 1716, advises in passing a coxcomb— ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... to you, sufficiently, not to be suspicious and captious yourself, nor to suppose that things, because they may be, are therefore meant at you. The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything of that kind, it is much better not to seem to understand, than to reply ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... vanity; on this account he determined on a journey to Paris, when Paris was the center of politeness; he there learnt to dress, to dance, and to move his hands gracefully in conversation; and returned a most consummate coxcomb. But after a very few years he relapsed into rusticity ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... to the ambassador of Cappadocia. The imperial ambassador was not in waiting, but they found for Austria a good Judean representation. With great judgment his highness the Grand Duke had sent the most atheistic coxcomb to be found in Florence to represent, at the bar of impiety, the house of apostolic majesty, and the descendants of the pious, though high-minded, Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before those grim ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... say that L'Isle is an impudent coxcomb. The most presumptuous fellow I know. I will find or make an occasion to give him ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... the man to books confined, Who from his study rails at human kind; Though what he learns he speaks, and may advance Some general maxims, or be right by chance. The coxcomb bird, so talkative and grave, That from his cage cries c**d, w**e, and knave, Though many a passenger he rightly call, You hold him no philosopher at all. And yet the fate of all extremes is such, Men may be read as well as books, too much. To observations which ourselves ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... not, You shall not have so much will to be wicked. I am more tender of your honour, Lady, And of your Age, you took me for a shadow; You took me to gloss over your discredit, To be your Fool, you had thought you had found a Coxcomb; I am innocent of any foul dishonour I mean to ye. Only I will be known to be your Lord now, And be a fair one too, or I ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... husband had hitherto looked on with seeming indifference, while lover after lover succeeded each other in his wife's favour. But even the Earl's long forbearance had its limits; and these were reached when he saw the insolent coxcomb, Buckingham, a man whom he had always detested, usurp his place. He screwed up his laggard manhood to the pitch of challenging the Duke to a duel, which took place one January morning in 1667, and of which Pepys tells ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... foolish, and naturally angry with Clarence for having led her into it, though he was quite without blame in the matter. She looked at him in his corner—he had taken the best corner, without consulting her inclinations—and thought him a vulgar coxcomb, which perhaps he was. But she would not have been so indignant except for that little bit of injured feeling, for which really, after all, he ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... need more trivial ills to quote, The freshly-furnished house that shines, The coxcomb's fashionable coat, Both brushed and polished "to the nines," Both yielding to some fatal flaw; A crack; a fiend who plays the flute; Both, both examples of the law ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... traceable to Brougham's spite. Macaulay and Brougham met in a London street. The great Whig historian praised the Report. Brougham belittled it. 'The matter,' he averred, 'came from a felon, the style from a coxcomb, and the Dictator furnished only six letters, D-u-r-h-a-m.' The whole question has been carefully discussed by Stuart J. Reid in his Life and Letters of the First Earl of Durham, and the myth has been given its quietus. Even if direct external evidence ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... — N. fop, fine gentleman; swell; dandy, dandiprat^; exquisite, coxcomb, beau, macaroni, blade, blood, buck, man about town, fast man; fribble, milliner^; Jemmy Jessamy^, carpet knight; masher, dude. fine lady, coquette; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have we here, villain?" and clutching at his victim, he raised the cane. Whereupon, with a serene and cheerful countenance, up rose the mighty form of Amyas Leigh, a head and shoulders above his tormentor, and that slate descended on the bald coxcomb of Sir Vindex Brimblecombe, with so shrewd a blow that slate and pate cracked at the same instant, and the poor pedagogue dropped to the floor, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... sent by the governor to conduct us to Chaco. This young man was the governor's son, by which means he obtained a command next in authority, upon this island, to his father. He ought to have been kept at school, for he was a vain empty coxcomb, much disliked by the people upon the island. After taking leave of the Jesuits, who, I imagine, were not sorry to be rid of us, after finding their expectations baulked, we set out, having about thirty soldiers on horseback to attend us. We rode about eight miles that night, when we came to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... meaning, who, being glad of so good an occasion of mirth, instead of a cup of sack and sugar for digestion, these men of little wit began to make inquiry and to search for the aforesaid fool, thinking it a deed of charity to ease him of so great a burden as his motley coxcomb was, and because such weak brains as are now resident almost in every place, might take benefit hereat. In ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... futilities. He chose to lay aside his hat and wear a scarlet fez of her embroidering; but by superficial observers this was necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a compliment to Lucy than as a mark of coxcombry. "Guest is a great coxcomb," young Torry observed; "but then he is a privileged person in St. Ogg's—he carries all before him; if another fellow did such things, everybody would say he made a fool ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... stores his memory with Taste and Grace, Purity and Delicacy, Manners and Unities, sounds which having been once uttered by those that understood them, have been since re-echoed without meaning, and kept up to the disturbance of the world by constant repercussion from one coxcomb to another. He considers himself as obliged to show by some proof of his abilities, that he is not consulted to no purpose, and therefore watches every opening for objection, and looks round for every opportunity to propose some specious alteration. Such opportunities a very ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... is confirmed, however, by the learned Spanheim, with the authority of medals, (see Commentaire, p. 156, 299, 397, 459.) Eusebius (Orat. c. 5) alleges, that Constantine dressed for the public, not for himself. Were this admitted, the vainest coxcomb could never ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... camelina.—The singular name of Coxcomb Prominent, was given to this moth from the crest on its thorax, which resembles that of a cock. The specific name was bestowed in consequence of two lobes on its upper wings, which it ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... and never had. So much did Richard love his wife and so anxious was he to find her guiltless that he magnified every virtue and excused every error until the verdict rendered was in her favor, and Frank alone was the delinquent—Frank, the vain, conceited coxcomb, who thought because a woman was civil to him that she must needs wish to marry him; Frank, the wretch who had presumed to pity his cousin, and called her husband a clown! How Richard's fingers tingled with a desire to thrash ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... from the shore, it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly thus. He who retires from the world will find himself, in reality, deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world. The public is not to be treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be threatened with desertion, in order ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... two or three adjuncts, as Peter Kipperson, a "march of intellect" man, Erpingham, one of Spoonbill's companions in debauchery, Ellen Fitzpatrick, one of his victims, Dr. Greendale's successor, Charles Pringle; and Zephaniah Pringle, a literary coxcomb of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... of the unfeminine folly of which fashionable society showed him many samples. Jo knew that 'young Laurence' was regarded as a most eligible parti by worldly mamas, was much smiled upon by their daughters, and flattered enough by ladies of all ages to make a coxcomb of him, so she watched him rather jealously, fearing he would be spoiled, and rejoiced more than she confessed to find that he still believed in modest girls. Returning suddenly to her admonitory tone, she said, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... a way that implied to him a thorough recognition of its intention, made me believe, by the subtlest looks and phrases—feminine nothings which could never be quoted against her—that he was really the object of her secret ridicule; that she thought him, as I did, a coxcomb, whom she would have pleasure in disappointing. Me she openly petted in my brother's presence, as if I were too young and sickly ever to be thought of as a lover; and that was the view he took of me. But I believe she must inwardly ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... the English residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and bells, or cap crested with a cock's head, whence the word "coxcomb." ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... mistress is such that nothing but the evidence of my own senses can avail to shake it, I am fain to own circumstances appear fully to warrant them)—should these suspicions not prove unfounded, it is her falsehood alone that will darken the sunshine of my future life. Fleming, or any other coxcomb who had taken advantage of her fickleness, would be equally beneath my notice. But enough of this; where shall I be most likely to ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... forgive me!—my jealous wrath broke bounds and I cursed him for a beardless coxcomb who must needs think he stood alone in the eye of every woman he should meet. "She needs a man!" I raged, lost now to every sense of decent justice, "a man, I say! And to whom would she send if not ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... of a waltz. The English girl herself can hardly be blamed for this state of things. She has been brought up to think that marriage is the be-all and end-all of her existence. "For my part," writes the author of "Cecil, the Coxcomb," "I never blame them when I see them capering and showing off their little monkey-tricks, for conquest. The fault is none of theirs. It is part of an erroneous system." Lady Jeune expresses the orthodox English position when she asserts ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Genius to grasp at too much. "A certain Magistrate (says Bruyere) arriving, by his Merit, to the first Dignities of the Gown, thought himself qualified for every Thing. He printed a Treatise of Morality, and published himself a Coxcomb." Universal Genij and universal Scholars are generally excellent at nothing. He is certainly the wisest Man, who endeavours to be perfectly furnished for some Business, and regards other Matters as no more ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... let us beware of applying to Macaulay himself that tone of exaggeration and laborious antithesis which he so often applied to others. Boswell, he says, was immortal, "because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb." It would be a feeble parody to retort that Macaulay became a great literary power "because he had no philosophy, little subtlety, and a heavy hand." For my part, I am slow to believe that the judgment of the whole English-speaking race, a judgment maintained over more than ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... taken with his name and standing. But with all his quickness of feeling, his manners were easy and courteous, simply because his nature was warm and kindly, and with all his natural fastidiousness there was nothing of the coxcomb about him. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of what they wear, Put off at night, with Lady B——'s hair. What bodily fatigue is half so bad? With anxious care they labour to be glad. What numbers, here, would into fame advance, Conscious of merit, in the coxcomb's dance; The tavern! park! assembly! mask! and play! Those dear destroyers of the tedious day! That wheel of fops! that saunter of the town! Call it diversion, and the pill goes down. Fools grin on fools, and, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... occasion? Now, she appears affected, and then again, she is the most unmindful woman in the world in spite of all you do to please her. She listens willingly and replies gaily to the gallant speeches and bold conversation of a certain Chevalier, a professional coxcomb, but to you she speaks seriously and with a preoccupied air. If you take on a tender and affectionate tone, she replies flippantly, or perhaps changes the subject. All this intimidates you, troubles you, and drives ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... applause. Now, warmed with malice, envy, spite, Their most obliging friends they bite; And, fond to copy human ways, Practise new mischiefs all their days. Thus the dull lad, too tall for school. With travel finishes the fool: Studious of every coxcomb's airs, He gambles, dresses, drinks, and swears; O'er looks with scorn all virtuous arts, For vice is fitted to ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... an answer so little to his mind, was almost bursting with rage. "Proceed with caution!" he cried. "You talk as if the thing could be entertained, or as if I had cause to fear the coxcomb! On the contrary, I intend to teach him a lesson a little confinement will cool his temper. You must give me a letter, my friend, and we will clap him in the Bastille for ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Phlox Drummondii, Double Petunias, Pansies, Double Sweet Alyssum, Double White Pyrethrum, Dwarf Ageratum, Verbenas, Salvias, Double Stocks, Celosias (Coxcomb). ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... are an impertinent young coxcomb, sir," cried the doctor indignantly. "Hideous, indeed! ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... the reader suppose that he was either a superannuated coxcomb or a driveling dotard. He was a man of sense and feeling, but his passion for Julia had, for the time, changed all his manner and habits.—He saw that she was a young and lovely woman, about to give herself to the arms of a man thrice ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... bade him begone. Faulkner, perceiving the error he had committed, instantly returned home, and resuming his usual dress, again went to the Dean, when he was very cordially received. "Ah, George," said he, "I am so glad to see you, for here has been an impudent coxcomb, bedizened in silks and gold lace, who wanted to pass himself off for you; but I soon sent the fellow about his business; for I knew you to be always a plain dressed and honest man, just as ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... that he can't believe. 'For my part, child, I have made myself easy in those points.' The character of a free-thinking exquisite is drawn from life without exaggeration, but with more than a touch of the bitter contempt Addison felt for the atheistic coxcomb, with whom he was too ready to confound the sincere questioner of orthodox opinion. The only passages of his in the 'Spectator' that border on intolerance are those in which he deals with the free-thinker; ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Murther's a horrible Sin Of one Handsome without, tho' a Coxcomb within; For not being a Beau, the sad Fate of poor Crab, Tho' himself hang'd for Love, was a Jest to each Drab; Then may Jering live long, And may Risby among The Fair with Jack Barkley, and Culpepper throng: May no Ruffin whose Heart as hard as a Stone ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... no man is less a coxcomb with regard to women than I am," Lord Mowbray modestly began; "but if I were inclined to boast, I believe it is pretty generally allowed in town, by all who know any thing of these things, that my practice in gallantry has been somewhat successful—perhaps ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... me a totally different personage, and I marvelled at the power of transformation owned by a few yards of cloth cut after a certain pattern. The spirit of my costume penetrated my very skin and within ten minutes more I had become something of a coxcomb. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... is there they will not choose, If only you will but oppose their choice?) Till Beppo should return from his long cruise, And bid once more her faithful heart rejoice, A man some women like, and yet abuse— A Coxcomb was he by the public voice; A Count of wealth, they said as well as quality, And in his pleasures of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... "The prim coxcomb with an enormous bag, whose favours, like those of Hercules between Virtue and Vice, are contended for by two rival orange girls, gives an admirable idea of the dress of the day; when, if we may judge ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... dedication of his poems to the Duke of Dorset; Johnson's Life of Dorset; Dryden's Essay on Satire, and Dedication of the Essay on Dramatic Poesy. The affection of Dorset for his wife and his strict fidelity to her are mentioned with great contempt by that profligate coxcomb Sir George Etherege in his letters from Ratisbon, Dec. 9/19 1687, and Jan. 16/26 1688; Shadwell's Dedication of the Squire of Alsatia; Burnet, i. 264.; Mackay's Characters. Some parts of Dorset's character are well touched in his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... extravagant Coxcomb, that will spend his Fortune before he comes to't; but he shall pay swinging Interest, and so let the Fool go on—Well, what do's ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... ejaculated she. A beautiful but silly woman complained to her of the persistency of her lovers. "You have only to open your mouth and speak, to get rid of their importunities," was the pungent answer. She effectually silenced a coxcomb, who aimed to annoy her by saying, "Oh! wit runs in the street nowadays," by the retort, "Too fast for fools to catch it, however." Of Madeleine Guimard, the fascinating dancer, who was exceedingly thin, Sophie said one ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... familiarity of our equals disgusted us—our potentiality was gone, and we were so much degraded that a puppy of a fellow had the impertinence to ask Jenny if she was going to one of the Old Ship balls. "Of course," said the coxcomb, "I don't mean the 'Almacks,' for they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... anything about it?'inquired the old lady indignantly. 'Miller's a conceited coxcomb, and you may tell him I said so.' Saying which, the old lady, quite unconscious that she had spoken above a whisper, drew herself up, and looked carving-knives ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... but little amends that they will be beauties."—"Madam," answered Adams, "with the utmost submission to your ladyship, I have been informed by lawyer Scout that any person who serves a year gains a settlement in the parish where he serves."—"Lawyer Scout," replied the lady, "is an impudent coxcomb; I will have no lawyer Scout interfere with me. I repeat to you again, I will have no more incumbrances brought on us: so I desire you will proceed no farther."—"Madam," returned Adams, "I would obey your ladyship in everything that is lawful; but surely the parties being poor is ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... him in the sand shall vouchsafe to take notice of him; then they rise unwillingly, and giving back enlarge the coffee-circle to receive him. But if there arrive a sheykh, a coffee-host, a richard amongst them of a few cattle, all the coxcomb companions within will hail him with their pleasant adulation taad ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the act of a true friend to Rossetti's memory to pretend that these drawings, of which for the next ten or fifteen years he continued to produce a great number, were without faults of a nature which any coxcomb could perceive, or without eccentricities which an untrained eye might easily mistake for faults; but this does not in the least militate against the fact that in two great departments of the painter's faculty, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... secret insinuations, and make them known with equal certainty as by the open discovery of them, it is certain that their influence is not equally strong and powerful. One who lashes me with concealed strokes of satire, moves not my indignation to such a degree, as if he flatly told me I was a fool and coxcomb; though I equally understand his meaning, as if he did. This difference is to be attributed to the influence of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... ago, his lordship, walking into a coffee-house, and taking up the evening paper, began poring over its paragraphs. A coxcomb in an adjoining box, who had frequently called to the waiter for the paper, walked over to Lord Camelford's box, and, seeing him lay down the paper for the moment while he was sipping his coffee, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... gone, when my thoughts reverted to Emily Bingham. I was not such a coxcomb as to fancy her in love with me; yet certainly there was something in the affair which looked not unlike it; and though, by such a circumstance, every embarrassment which pressed upon me had become infinitely greater, I could not dissemble from ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... I shall not be considered an overweening coxcomb for saying that, on the whole, I found more favor with the ladies than with the gentlemen; especially ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Solmes is a coarse man. He is not delicate enough for your niceness; because I suppose he dresses not like a fop and a coxcomb, and because he lays not himself out in complimental nonsense, the poison of female minds. He is a man of sense, that I can tell you. No man talks more to the purpose to us: but you fly him so, that he has no opportunity given him, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... heartless; for, suppose Jules 45 a coxcomb as much as you choose, still, for this mere coxcombry, you will have brushed off—what do folks style it?—the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... all this was in agitation, there enters a solicitor from Newgate, desiring Lord Peter would please to procure a pardon for a thief that was to be hanged to-morrow. But the two brothers told him he was a coxcomb to seek pardons from a fellow who deserved to be hanged much better than his client, and discovered all the method of that imposture in the same form I delivered it a while ago, advising the solicitor to put his friend upon obtaining a pardon from the king. ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... touched up the newest stranger—the lion of the day, the gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the State. He was an inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy "poetry" for the Journal, about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were headed, "TO MARY IN H—L," meaning to Mary in Hannibal, of course. But ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... suffered him to be so much with her if he had conceived the least suspicion of the kind. The King persisted, and told him he was wrong to endeavour to conceal a fact which was unquestionable. It was rumoured, also, that the Abbe de Bernis had been a favoured lover of hers. The said Abbe was rather a coxcomb; he had a handsome face, and wrote poetry. Madame de Pompadour was the theme of his gallant verses. He sometimes received the compliments of his friends upon his success with a smile which left some room for conjecture, although he denied ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... 'Sure, of all blockheads, scholars are the worst.' BOSWELL. Johnson's meaning, however, is, that a scholar who is a blockhead must be the worst of all blockheads, because he is without excuse. But Bramston, in the assumed character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains that all scholars are blockheads on account of their scholarship. J. BOSWELL, JUN. There is, I believe, a Spanish proverb to the effect that, 'to be an utter fool a man must know Latin.' A writer in Notes and Queries (5th S. xii. 285) suggests that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... people in favour of things, persons, and wares of all kinds that come from England. The printer tells his hawkers that he has got "an excellent new song just brought from London." I have somewhat of a tendency that way myself; and upon hearing a coxcomb from thence displaying himself with great volubility upon the park, the playhouse, the opera, the gaming ordinaries, it was apt to beget in me a kind of veneration for his parts and accomplishments. 'Tis not many years, since I remember a person who by his style and literature seems ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the enemy is an ass, and a fool, and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass, and a fool, and a prating coxcomb, in your own ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... was something else; By the Lord Harry I can't forbear laughing at the Coxcomb, Ha, ha, ha; He told me, Ha, ha, ha, that one Summerfield, a very honest Fellow as ever liv'd, is grown exceeding familiar ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... answered, "such a villain helps but for absurd benefits. Mr. Gering might have stayed with Monsieur Iberville in honour and safety at least. And why a coxcomb? You thought different once; and you cannot doubt his bravery. Enemy of our country though he be, I am surely bound to speak him well—he saved ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conquests. With this view he frequented public walks, concerts, and assemblies, became remarkably rich and fashionable in his clothes, gave entertainments to the ladies, and was in the utmost hazard of turning out a most egregious coxcomb. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... He had nourished his experience on French novels; he had corrected it by various friendships; he had crowned it with the confession that one could never tell what the sex meant one way or the other. But this fact remained—he was a coxcomb, and, whenever he owned himself puzzled, it was on a single ground only—how seriously was the lady at stake affected by his charms? Feeling, as he did, the infinite inequality that existed between men, and conscious of his own reputation as a leader ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... in looking back over the book of my memory, that I can find no page therein which is not overwritten with the name of some pretty girl. And though I will not be such a coxcomb as to assert that I was always favored by any fair upon whom it might please me to cast an approving eye, yet I must needs admit that I found a great deal of favor. This I attribute largely to a merry disposition and a ready desire to please, together with a very genial indifference if, by ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... irregular; Where woods and palaces at once surprise, Gardens on gardens, domes on domes arise, And endless beauties tire the wand'ring eyes; So sooth my wishes, or so charm my mind, As this retreat secure from human kind. No knave's successful craft does spleen excite, No coxcomb's tawdry splendour shocks my sight; No mob-alarm awakes my female fear, No praise my mind, nor envy hurts my ear, Ev'n fame itself can hardly reach me here: Impertinence with all her tattling train, Fair-sounding flattery's delicious bane; Censorious folly, noisy party-rage The ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... for him, and three hundred and sixty-five suits of clothes: so many suits, all pictured in a Book; a valet enters every morning, proposes a suit, which, after deliberation, with perhaps amendments, is acceded to, and worn at dinner. Vainest of human clothes-horses; foolishest coxcomb Valori has seen: it is visibly his notion that it was he, Bruhl, by his Saxon auxiliaries, by his masterly strokes of policy, that checkmated Friedrich, and drove him from Bohemia last Year; and, for the rest, that Friedrich is ruined, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... were scarce, The raw, unpractised authors could, with ease, A young and unexperienced audience please: No single character had e'er been shown, But the whole herd of fops was all their own; Rich in originals, they set to view, In every piece, a coxcomb that was new. But now our British theatre can boast Drolls of all kinds, a vast, unthinking host! 10 Fruitful of folly and of vice, it shows Cuckolds, and cits, and bawds, and pimps, and beaux; Rough country knights are found of every shire; Of every fashion gentle fops appear; And ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
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