"Foppish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hostile country, and through unknown paths, his ten thousand Greeks; or Caesar, riding up and down the banks of the Rubicon, sad enough belike when alone, but at the head of his men cheerful, joyous, well dressed, rather foppish, in fact, his face shining with good humor as with oil. Again, Nelson, in the worst of dangers, was as cheerful as the day. He had even a rough but quiet humor in him just as he carried his coxswain behind him to bundle the swords of the Spanish and French captains ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... perhaps, careless in dress and rather affected it. Great heavy boots, loose collar, and general roughness of attire were then peculiar to the West and in our circle considered manly. Anything that could be labeled foppish was looked upon with contempt. I remember the first gentleman I ever saw in the service of the railway company who wore kid gloves. He was the object of derision among us who aspired to be manly men. I was a great deal the better in all these respects after ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... their censure that pretend it is foppish and affected for any person to praise himself: yet let it be as silly as they please, if they will but allow it needful: and indeed what is more befitting than that Folly should be the trumpet of her own praise, and dance after her own ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... his good clothes, even to his gray spats. I had to argue a long time to get them on him. He said they looked foppish, but I just got the button-hook and put them on him while he was arguing, and asked him who thought of this picnic anyway! and he just laughed and said he guessed he had ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... pleasing Reynolds, he pretended to lament that the great painter's genius was not exerted on stuff more durable than canvas, and suggested copper. Sir Joshua urged the difficulty of procuring plates large enough for historical subjects. "What foppish obstacles are these!" exclaimed Johnson. "Here is Thrale has a thousand ton of copper: you may paint it all round if you will, I suppose; it will serve him to brew in afterwards. Will it not, Sir?" (to Thrale, who ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Sir Percy," murmured the young girl, casting shy glances at the elegant cavalier before her, vainly trying to find in the indolent, foppish personality of this society butterfly, some trace of the daring man of action, the bold adventurer who had snatched her and her lover from out the very tumbril that bore ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to the south, the imperial road to Rome, a decisive change takes place. The Christs have been taking on various different characters, all of them more or less realistically conveyed. One Christus is very elegant, combed and brushed and foppish on his cross, as Gabriele D'Annunzio's son posing as a martyred saint. The martyrdom of this Christ is according to the most polite convention. The elegance is very important, and very Austrian. One might almost imagine the young man ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... before the grille. It was Clarence Brant! Mary Rogers had always seen him, in the loyalty of friendship, with Susy's prepossessed eyes, yet she fancied that morning that he had never looked so handsome before. Even the foppish fripperies of his riding-dress and silver trappings seemed as much the natural expression of conquering youth as the invincible morning sunshine. Perhaps it might have been a reaction against Susy's caprice or ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... (sic), spirit. The library, though not very ample, is well chosen; but as the prince will admit into it no editions but what are beautiful and pleasing to the eye, and there are, nevertheless, numbers of excellent books that are but indifferently printed, this finikin (sic) and foppish taste makes many disagreeable chasms in this collection. The books are pompously bound in Turkey leather; and two of the most famous book-binders of Paris were expressly sent for to do this work. Bonneval pleasantly told me, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... loud and his accent somewhat foppish, having a little of the "Guardsman" affectation of languor ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... see anything he had learnt but to take his broth twice." Nay, in our own remembrance, the use of a carving knife was considered as a novelty; and a gentleman of ancient family and good literature used to rate his son, a friend of mine, for introducing such a foppish superfluity.'—London Mag. 1778, p.199. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... cautious way of carrying on the conversation, and making himself informed upon the subject; 'but I know she does. She was very young when she made the engagement - if it may be called one, I am not even sure of that - and has repented of it, perhaps. Perhaps - it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don't mean it in that light - she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... who came into the room with Madame de Lera, if a typical Parisian in the matter of his careful, rather foppish, dress, and in his bored expression, yet showed that he was possessed of the old-fashioned good breeding which is still to be found in France, if only in that peculiar section of French society known collectively as "the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... accented on the last syllable, when they end with a single consonant, preceded by a single vowel, or by a vowel after qu, double their final letter before a suffix beginning with a vowel: as, rob ed robbed; fop ish foppish; squat er squatter; ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... natty and jaunty and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose! His prose had a natural grace ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a ring with a star-sapphire, which made him incongruous, showy and foppish, and that was a thing not easy of forgiveness in the West. Certainly the West would not have tolerated him as far as it did, had it not been for three things: the extraordinary good nature which made him giggle; the fact that on more than one occasion ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Cockney, who is said to have been a very foppish Cockney, was perfectly right in what he said, and therein manifested a knowledge of the English mind and character, and likewise of the modern English language, to which his catechist, who, it ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... sine qua non ingredient in all the dishes of which I mean to compose my hobgoblin repast." Later in the same year Lewis came to Edinburgh and was introduced to Scott, who found him an odd contrast to the grewsome horrors of his books, being a cheerful, foppish, round-faced little man, a follower of fashion and an assiduous tuft-hunter. "Mat had queerish eyes," writes his protege: "they projected like those of some insects, and were flattish on the orbit. His person was extremely small and boyish—he was indeed the least man I ever saw, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... paper had an account of it. If I were to drop a letter in the street, it would be in the newspaper next day, and nobody would think its publication an outrage. The editor objected to my hair, as not curling sufficiently. He admitted an eye; but objected again to dress, as being somewhat foppish, 'and indeed perhaps rather flash.' 'But such,' he benevolently adds, 'are the differences between American and English taste—rendered more apparent, perhaps, by all the other gentlemen present being dressed in black.' Oh that you could ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... as paint and scent and ear-rings—as foppish attire and fantastical phrases do become an honest lover," said Phoebe, indignantly. "Dost think that Mary Burton prizes these weary labyrinthine sentences—all hay and wool, like the monstrous swelling of trunk hose? Far better can I read in Master Lilly's books. Thinkest thou I came hither ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... carried to extremes, because all naturally love that which they possess, and come to prize highly those who regard it with favor. Hence, poor men sometimes marry rich wives, and seldom fail to give something in return. The story is familiar of the two foppish young men who were said to have met at a noted hotel or on change, when one accosted the other by the question, "Who did you marry?" "Ah," said he, "I married fifty thousand dollars. I forget her other name." Such men, however, are ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... was a Roman Catholic, none the less earnest because he had a merry way with him. On a certain Friday he was seen to be fasting by a very foppish barrister, who thought a great ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... board the plaything crafts. Remarks which they exchanged with one another were framed to indicate a sort of lofty scorn for these frolickers of the sea. The coasting skippers, most of whom wore hard hats, as if they did not want to be confounded with those foppish yacht captains, patrolled their quarter-decks and spat ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... punctuality—show disrespect for age—sneer at things sacred, or absent himself from regular attendance at divine service—or evince an inclination to expensive pleasures beyond his means, or to low and vulgar amusements; should he be foppish, eccentric, or very slovenly in his dress; or display a frivolity of mind, and an absence of well-directed energy in his worldly pursuits; let the young lady, we say, while there is yet time, eschew that gentleman's acquaintance, and allow it gently to drop. The effort, at whatever cost to her ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... through billowy frills of finest Mechline lace: the extravagantly short-waisted satin coat, wide-lapelled waistcoat, and tight-fitting striped breeches, set off his massive figure to perfection, and in repose one might have admired so fine a specimen of English manhood, until the foppish ways, the affected movements, the perpetual inane laugh, brought one's admiration of Sir Percy Blakeney ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... stupid and two bits stubborn. He puzzled over Mamise's peculiar orders. He wanted to hear the rest of that fiery speech. He turned and stared after Mamise and noted the way she went, with the foppish stranger carrying the heavy baggage. But he was used to obeying orders after a little balking, and in time his slow brain started him on the hunt for Davidge. He quickened his pace and asked questions, being put off or directed ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... up the cobbles in a great hurry, flailing the air, as he went, with a short rattan, for he affected some of the foppish customs the old officers brought back from the Continent. He was for passing us with no more than a jerk of the head, but M'Iver and I between us took up the mouth of the lane, and as John seemed to smile on him like one with gossip to exchange, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... one, to whom I was well known, the others perfect strangers. One of the latter, a very well-dressed but rather foppish, conceited young man, talked much upon literary matters, and from his conversation gave you to understand that he was on the most intimate terms with all the celebrated authors of the day. After giving us a very frank, and by no means just critique ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... your hands," Hector said. "I wish for a handsome dress, and yet one which shall in no way be foppish, but shall be suitable to my station. I am Baron de la Villar, colonel of the Poitou regiment ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... was not ended even then. Other twitchings took him on other parts of the body, and he tore off his armour and his foppish clothes, and always where the bare flesh showed, there had the horrid plague written its white mark; and in the end, being able to endure no more, the man fell to the pavement and lay ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... contrast otherwise, however, the two presented. The man next the aisle was well past sixty, rotund of abdomen, rubicund of countenance, beetle-browed. He was elaborately well-groomed, almost foppish in attire, and wore the obvious stamp of worldly success, the air of one accustomed to giving orders and seeing ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... in Archie Maine's quarters often told him that he was rather a good-looking young fellow; that is to say, he gave promise of growing into a well-featured, manly youth without any foppish, effeminate, so-called handsomeness. But nature had been very kind to him, and, honestly, he scarcely knew anything about his own appearance; for when he looked in his glass for reasons connected with cleanliness— putting his hair straight, smoothing over his curliness, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... foppish air. He recognised that Vane, poverty stricken scribbler though he might be, was a gentleman. He bowed and turned towards the man who, with Jarvis, had interposed in the early stages of the altercation. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... suggested that social progress will, or ought to, expel machinery from most of the industries it controls, or to prevent its application to industries which it has not yet reached. The luxury and foppish refinement of a small section of "fashionable" society, unnaturally relieved of the wholesome necessity of work, cannot be taken as an indication of the ways in which individuality or quality of consumption may or will assert itself, in a society where ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... d'Urfe asked me to dine with the Chevalier d'Arzigny, a man upwards of eighty, vain, foppish, and consequently ridiculous, known as "The Last of the Beaus." However, as he had moved in the court of Louis XIV., he was interesting enough, speaking with all the courtesy of the school, and having a fund of anecdote relating to the Court of that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... contribute to their guilt; for if princes, who living are above control, should think that no censure is to attend them when dead, it would be new encouragement to them to play the fool and act the tyrant. When they are so kind as to specify their crimes under their own hands, it would be foppish delicacy indeed to suppress them. I hope you will proceed, Sir, and with the same impartiality. It was justice due to Charles to publish the extravagancies of his enemies too. The comparison can never be fairly made, but when we see the evidence on both sides. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... was swarthy of complexion, and his smoothly-shaven, square-set jaw and full red lips were bluish with the subcutaneous blackness of his beard. His dress was so distinctly late in style as to seem almost foppish; but there was nothing of the exquisite in his erect and athletic form, or ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... read by the gaslight, survey him well. Do you not know him? Is it possible? What! the brilliant sharper! The ruffian exquisite! Jasper Losely! Can it be? Once before, in the fields of Fawley, we beheld him out at elbows, seedy, shabby, ragged. But then it was the decay of a foppish spendthrift,—clothes distained, ill-assorted, yet, still of fine cloth; shoes in holes, yet still pearl-coloured brodequins. But now it is the decay of no foppish spendthrift: the rags are not of fine cloth; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... advantages offered by the Academy—he would not draw there—would not enrol himself as a student. He would toil no more in the studios of others—he was now a full-blown artist himself. So he argued. 'Naturally vain.' writes J.T. Smith, one of his biographers, 'he became ridiculously foppish, and by dressing to the extreme of fashion was often the laughing-stock of his brother artists, particularly when he wished to pass for a man of high rank, whose costume he mimicked; and that folly he would often venture ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... paintings of Italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their gaudy religion, and Rome is the general storeshop of Europe. The arts owe much to Popery, and Popery owes much of its universality to the arts. The French have attained to a sort of foppish magnificence in art; in Holland, selfishness is the ruling passion, and in England vanity is united with selfishness. Portrait-painting, therefore, has succeeded, and ever will succeed better in England than in any other country, and the demand will continue as ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... magisterial air, Of solemn aspect, filled the chair; And, with the port of human race, Wore wisdom written on his face. He from the flippant world retired, And in a barn himself admired; And, like an ancient sage, concealed The follies foppish life revealed. He pondered o'er black-lettered pages Of old philosophers and sages— Of Xenophon, and of the feat Of the ten thousand in retreat; Pondered o'er Plutarch and o'er Plato, On Scipio, Socrates, and Cato. But what most roused the bird's ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... man 's so foppish that he will have them made tight enough to display the goodness of his thighs," rejoined Gibbs, who, being dry, was enjoying the plight of the rest. "Make yourselves smart, gentlemen, there are ladies at ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Arline's arrest, and she had not seen him since. Gorgeously dressed in a ball gown, she was in a beautiful room in her father's house. Her father entered with Florestein and begged her to think kindly of her silly foppish cousin. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... very tall, very spare, middle-aged man, with a slight stoop in his shoulders, with a thin, flushed face, sharp features, weak, blue eyes, and scanty red hair and whiskers, dressed with foppish precision. He looked something like a fool; but as little like the confederate of robbers and murderers as it ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... he must have worth," said the Judge, "from the recommendation of my friend B. This vanity, and these foppish habits of his, we shall soon know how to get rid of; the man himself is unquestionably good; and, dear Elise, be kind to him, and manage so that he shall feel at ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... aquiline features were convulsed into a spasm of vindictive hatred, which had set his dead face in a terribly fiendish expression. He had evidently been in his bed when the alarm had broken out, for he wore a foppish embroidered night-shirt, and his bare feet projected from his trousers. His head was horribly injured, and the whole room bore witness to the savage ferocity of the blow which had struck him down. Beside him lay the heavy poker, bent into a curve by the concussion. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... immediately,' Julia answered, and declined with coldness the chair which he pushed forward. At another time his foppish dress might have moved her to smiles, or his feebleness and vapid oaths to pity. This morning she needed her pity for herself, and was in no smiling mood. Her world had crashed around her; she would sit ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... my warren, that is, my cellar, my enclosed cellar, where you had no business to be. And the Court told Ralph no matter 'que le feisant leva hors de le garrein, vostre faucon luy pursuy en le garrein.' So there's good sound English law, and none of your foppish outlandishries in Latin," finished the Baron, vastly delighted at being able to display the little learning that he had. For you see, very few gentlemen in those benighted days knew how to speak the beautiful language of the law so ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... most readily acquired this delightful Southern habit of taking life easy. In fact the waxwings are inclined to be lazy, except when they are nesting; they are the most deliberate creatures one can find, but very foppish and neat in their dress. Never will you find a particle of dust on their silky plumage, and the pretty red dots on their wings and tails look always as bright as if kept in a bandbox. They have, indeed, just reason to be proud of themselves, ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... determined; his expression kindly and compassionate. The razor never touches his face, but his brown beard is always neatly trimmed, for the young Commandant-General is particular in regard to his personal appearance in a manly way, though in no respect foppish. He is now, and always has been, an excellent athlete, a good rifle shot, and a first-class horseman; not given at any time to indoor pastimes over much, though fond of a quiet game of whist. He was born in Natal, of Dutch parents, and married to Miss Emmett, a relative ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... given twenty years before, and prided himself upon having all his work done at home. His workrooms, as I have said, were no elysiums; but still, as good, alas! as those of three tailors out of four. He was proud, luxurious, foppish; but he was honest and kindly enough, and did many a generous thing by men who had been long in his employ. At all events, his journeymen could live on ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Carlyle catch the strained gestures without the rapture of his inspiration. Would-be followers of Mill fancied themselves to be logical when they were only hopelessly unsympathetic and unimaginative; and would-be followers of some other writers can be effeminate and foppish without being subtle or graceful. Macaulay's thoroughness of work has, perhaps, been less contagious than we could wish. Something of the modern raising of the standard of accuracy in historical inquiry ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... will invite him and Allen Washburn and Percy Falconer to come along on a trip or two," said Mollie, with a wink at her chums as she mentioned Percy's name. The latter was a foppish young man about town, who tried to be friendly with Betty; but she ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... note of violence which he understood; it even lulled him into a belief that he would still live to tell the tale. But in the dying light he looked up, and in the fierce unrelenting face, made the more sinister by its foppish furniture, he read ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... gracefully flourished his lace handkerchief. He was accustomed to being appealed to in all matters pertaining to etiquette, to the toilet, to the latest cut in coats, and the procedure in duels. Good-natured, foppish, and idle, he felt quite happy and in his element thus to be made chief organiser of the tragic farce, about to be enacted on the parquet ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... figured among the Kentucky horse-traders, or made stump speeches in Arkansas. His dress was inclined to the gaudy. He wore a flashy brown-colored frock-coat with the collar laid very far back, a foppish white vest exposing his shirt-bosom nearly down to the waistbands of his pants, which were of gray stripes. But the more fanciful portions of his dress were a large and costly fob-chain, which hung very low and supported an immense ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... from which to study the work minutely. He found one cheek-bone higher than the other, and was of opinion, from the position of the lips and tongue, that it was modelled from a cast taken after death. It is a beefy, commonplace countenance, heavy, dull, and vacant, rendered trivial and conceited by foppish mustaches curled up beneath the nostrils. It bears little resemblance to the familiar Droeshout portrait engraved for the first edition of the plays, and still less to the so-called Stratford portrait exhibited at the museum on Henley Street. This picture was discovered many years ago ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... "Don't tell our foppish friend below, or he'll rend our ears with his howls. But you, my young friend, it's rather rough on you. How old ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... elegancies of life. From first to last he was the stern and beetle-browed marauder, who would have despised the frippery of Sixteen-String Jack as vehemently as his sudden appearance would have frightened the foppish ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... contempt as a "Slippery Dick." But he was a good bookkeeper. Besides, however many leeches he harboured about him, his intimate knowledge of Tweed's doings kept him in power. Perhaps Barnard, more in the public eye than any other, had less legal learning than wit, yet in spite of his foppish dress he never lacked sufficient dignity to float the appearance of a learned judge. He was a handsome man, tall and well proportioned, with peculiarly brilliant eyes, a jet black moustache, light olive complexion, and a graceful carriage. Whenever in trouble Tweed could safely turn ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... true friends of men. The Spartan, surely, would not think that he received only his body from his mother. The sage, had he lived in that community, could not have thought the souls of "vain and foppish men will be degraded after death to the forms of women; and, if they do not then make great efforts to ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... lofty stature forward and back, marking his commas and semicolons with flapping of his elbows, and all but doubling his body at his periods. Mr. Romfrey had enough of it half-way down the column; his head went sharply to left and right. Cecil's peculiar foppish slicing down of his hand pictured him protesting that there was more and finer of the inimitable stuff to follow. The end of the scene exhibited the paper on the turf, and Colonel Halkett's hand ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... doubted him from the start. The fellow was almost foppish;—could anybody who wore such good clothes have also good motives and good principles? Abner disdained him too as a public speaker;—what could a man hope to accomplish by a few quiet colloquial remarks delivered in his ordinary voice? The man who ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... generalisations. These are the mere translation of the social facts we have hypotheticated into the language of costume. There will be a great variety of costume and no compulsions. The doubles of people who are naturally foppish on earth will be foppish in Utopia, and people who have no natural taste on earth will have inartistic equivalents. Everyone will not be quiet in tone, or harmonious, or beautiful. Occasionally, as I go through ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... with wealth and learning. The bourgeoisie wanted power and privilege commensurate with their place in business and administration. It seemed unbearable that a foppish noble whose only claims to respect were a moldy castle and a worm-eaten patent of nobility should everywhere take precedence over men of means and brains. Why should the highest social distinctions, the richest sinecures, and the posts of greatest honor in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... captandum; canting, insincere. not natural, unnatural; self-conscious; maniere; artificial; overwrought, overdone, overacted; euphuist &c. 577. stiff, starch, formal, prim, smug, demure, tire a quatre epingles, quakerish, puritanical, prudish, pragmatical, priggish, conceited, coxcomical, foppish, dandified; finical, finikin; mincing, simpering, namby-pamby, sentimental. Phr. "conceit in weakest bodies ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... A foppish physician once reminded Johnson of his having been in company with him on a former occasion; 'I do not remember it, Sir.' The physician still insisted; adding that he that day wore so fine a coat that it must have attracted ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... but slight exercise of fancy to see inside the stuffy little theatre of Bath, on that memorable summer afternoon, when "Sir Courtly Nice"[A] is produced, with Cibber in the foppish title-role and the fair unknown as Leonora, "Belguard's sister, in love with Farewell." Her fat, peaceful, and phlegmatic Majesty, Anne Stuart, is in the royal box, perhaps (although she is far from being a playgoer), ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... readmitted. A year before this a severe Act of Parliament was passed, prohibiting Templars wearing beards of more than three weeks' growth, upon pain of a forty-shilling fine, and double for every week after monition. The young lawyers were evidently getting too foppish. They were required to cease wearing Spanish cloaks, swords, bucklers, rapiers, gowns, hats, or daggers at their girdles. Only knights and benchers were to display doublets or hose of any light colour, except scarlet and crimson, or to affect velvet caps, scarf-wings to their gowns, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... exile, upon a footing of equality with his banished nobles, and had partaken freely and promiscuously in the pleasures and frolics by which they had endeavoured to sweeten adversity. He was led in this way to let distinction and ceremony fall to the ground as useless and foppish, and could not even on premeditation, it is said, act for a moment the part of a King either at parliament or council, either in words or gesture. When he attended the House of Lords, he would descend from the throne and stand by the fire, drawing a crowd about him that broke up all regularity and ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Tannhaeuser's abjuration of sensual life, and at that moment the tall, spare figure of Mr. Hermann Goetze, the manager, appeared in the doorway leading to the stalls. He was with his apparitor and satellite, Mr. Wheeler, a foppish little man, who seemed pleased at being in confidential conversation with his great chief. Catching sight of Evelyn in the box just above his eyes, he smiled and bowed obsequiously. A sudden thought seemed to strike him, and Evelyn ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... coachman with Bergami whiskers, red vest, and foppish manners, was replaced by a sinister-looking individual, whose very appearance was enough ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... ridiculous in any way—the situation would have been a shade less tragic. But he came too near her ideal. This was the kind of man she had dreamed of, and she had accepted in his stead the first frivolous, foppish youth whom chance had presented to her, under a borrowed name. Her own instinct, her own imagination, had told her the kind of man Brian of the Abbey must needs be, and, in her sordid craving for wealth ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... eccentric Irish clergyman, who diverted himself by weaving romances and constructing tragedies. He loved to mingle with the gay and frivolous; he affected foppish attire, and prided himself on his exceptional skill in dancing. His indulgence in literary work was probably but another expression of his longing to escape from the strait and narrow way prescribed for a Protestant clergyman. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... was fashionable to despise fashion. It was etiquette to pay no regard to etiquette. The haughty Austrian noble prided himself in dressing as he pleased, and looked with contempt upon the studied attitudes and foppish attire of the French. The Parisian courtier, on the other hand, rejoicing in his ruffles, and ribbons, and practiced movements, despised the boorish manners, as he deemed them, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... search of a kill. His commercial caution steered him wide of the moral women in his employ, but the other kind, and especially the innocent or the inexperienced, had cause to know and to fear him. In appearance he was slender and foppish; he affected a pronounced waist-line in his coats, his eyes were large and dark and brilliant, his mouth was sensual. He never raised his voice, he never appeared to see plain women; such girls as accepted his attentions were sure of advancement, but ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... with a strong hand, upon every blessing which came in her way. She knew that the foppish young thing at the teacher's desk was "stuck-up," but Lizzie was willing that she should be whatever she chose, so long as it was possible to live near her, to study her, and to become like the best that was ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... fairer, the season more sacred for its association with thoughts of him and his love. Whereas, my Alfred's adoring platitudes would disgust me with the sunset, with the world, and with myself, for permitting him to haunt my presence and hang upon my smile—foppish barnacle that he is! If you knew how I ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... said he to a foppish-looking fellow, lying at length on a rosewood sofa, intent on the pages of a yellow-covered volume which he held above his perfumed head; "come, have done with 'Ten Thousand a Year,' and let us have a last game of cards. We shall ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... to Colonel Gray for duty he appeared the ideal soldier. Tall, erect, handsome, he was an expert and graceful horseman. He rode a superb and spirited bay charger which took fences and ditches like a deer. Though not foppish, he was scrupulous to a degree about his dress. His clothes fitted, and not a speck of dust could be found on his person, his horse, or his equipments. The details of drill fell largely to him—Colonel Gray attending to the general executive management. As ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... never before possessed, telling me that I "would need it for travelling expenses." All the while he drew me out on literature. On the Long Island Sound steamer he bade me notice a young gentleman (whom I was destined to know in after years), a man with curly hair and very foppish air, accompanied by a page "in an eruption of buttons," and told me that it was N. P. Willis. And so revelling in romance and travel, with mince-pie and turkey for my daily food, my pocket stuffed ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... when he had finished he replaced it in his pocket. Then he sauntered to the telegrapher's station in the corner of the hotel office and wrote upon a blank with swift decision a telegram which seemed a trifle at variance with the almost foppish elegance of his appearance. The ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the Captain, halting his company and riding forward. He was a thin and foppish young gentleman in a flaxen wig, and spoke with a high sense of authority, having but recently sacrificed the pleasures of his coffee-house and a fine view of St. James's Park to seek even in the cannon's mouth a bubble reputation that promised to ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... expected to see a heavy, domineering man. Instead, a slender, stealthy man in the uniform of a General rose from behind a tapestry topped table, revealing, as he did, a slight stoop in his back, perhaps a trifle foppish. He held ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... outside world, and, as he stood there in the gathering twilight, he looked a romantic figure. Tall and well-built, he took, perhaps, an almost excessive care over his dress. Yet there was nothing effeminate or foppish about his appearance. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... age of 50 is possessed with the ambition of being a pretty fellow, wears corsets to diminish his bulk, uses cosmetics, as he told Mrs. Gore, to smooth and soften a skin growing somewhat wrinkled and rigid with age, dresses in a style which would be thought foppish in a much younger man. You must imagine such a man standing before the gravest tribunal in the land, and engaged in causes of the deepest moment; but still apparently thinking how he can declaim like a practised ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... "My foppish friend," spoke up The Senator, "the reputation of Grizzley Bob says so. A reputation that is the terror and admiration of every mining camp in the mountains. A dead shot, a sure thing with the knife, a heart to succor the oppressed and often to ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... we have heard of young solicitors, of foppish solicitors, of short solicitors; but on the stage they are always very thin and very old. The youngest stage solicitor we ever remember to have seen looked about sixty—the oldest about a hundred ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... his golden beard and a light leaped up in his eye. Any dandyish or foppish quality that he might have seemed to have disappeared at once, and Harry saw ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was with the Baking Powder Trust, he told Sommers. He was tall and fair, with reddish hair that massed itself above his forehead in a shiny curl, and was supplemented by a waving auburn mustache. His scrupulous dress, in the fashion of the foppish clerk, gave an air of distinction to the circle on the steps. Most of this circle were so average as scarcely to make an impression at first sight,—a few young women who earned their livelihood in business offices, a few decayed, middle-aged bachelors, a group of widows whose incomes fitted ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and yellow cottons of the common people side by side with the heavy linens that furnished forth the tables of the rich. But hatred gave him wits. Gave him speed, too. He was only thirty feet behind Peter Niburg when that foppish ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... see our river-terrace on my sister's visiting-day, when De Malfort is lolling on the marble balustrade, singing one of your favourite chansons to the guitar which he touches so exquisitely, and when Hyacinth's fine lady friends and foppish admirers are sitting about in the sunshine! Thou wouldst confess that even Renard's garden can ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Sara more than once, but every time had seemed to be repelled by her commanding look, or else by the enigmatical smile of her husband. Finally, however, proudly conquering all diffidence, he boldly faced both, and with foppish confidence made, in a tenderly gallant tone, the following speech: "Senora!—list to me!—I swear—by the roses of both the kingdoms of Castile, by the Aragonese hyacinths and the pomegranate blossoms of Andalusia! by the sun which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... my Advocate to Lady Rodomont, whose Beauty I have long admir'd, and whose Estate I do profoundly reverence. [Aside.] Nor can I on a just survey of my Person and Parts find the least Obstacle, why her Inclinations shou'd n't mount like mine, that without much Ceremony or foppish Courtship, we might unite Circumstances, and astonish the World at the Sight of a couple ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... him, that she could not imagine how it was possible to bear a silly fellow, "Pardon me, mademoiselle," replied I, "we suffer fops sometimes very patiently for the sake of their extravagances." This man was notoriously foppish and extravagant. My answer pleased, and we soon got rid of him at the Palace of Chevreuse. But he thought to have despatched me, for he hired one Grandmaison, a ruffian, to assassinate me, who apprised me of his design. The first time I met M. d'Aumale, which was at the Duc ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... education; I simply maintain that the sort of education the colored people of the South stand most in need of is elementary and industrial. They should be instructed for the work to be done. Many a colored farmer boy or mechanic has been spoiled to make a foppish gambler or loafer, a swaggering pedagogue or a cranky homiletician. Men may be spoiled by education, even as they are spoiled by illiteracy. Education is the preparation for a future work; hence men should be educated with special reference to ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... given you a wrong impression about her," Priscilla said, speaking with a slight effort. "It is only the idle, foppish men about town she has no ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the new-comer was a total stranger to him. He was a young man of about nineteen, with handsome features, characterized by an expression of nonchalance and careless good humor; clad in a very rich dress, somewhat foppish, but of irreproachable taste; and the horse he bestrode was an animal as elegant in figure and appointments ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... scarlet doublet, flaming enough to set the turkey yard afire; the silken hose and big shoe-buckles late introduced from France by the king; and a beaver hat with plumes a-nodding like my lady's fan. My curls, I mind, tumbled forward thicker than those foppish French perukes. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... need to say more. But if you have a family, a father or a mother, think of all the sorrow that might come to them from such a letter as yours addressed to a poet of whom you know nothing personally. All writers are not angels; they have many defects. Some are frivolous, heedless, foppish, ambitious, dissipated; and, believe me, no matter how imposing innocence may be, how chivalrous a poet is, you will meet with many a degenerate troubadour in Paris ready to cultivate your affection only to betray it. By such a man your letter would be interpreted otherwise ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... sternly across the table at Miss Sylvia Reynolds, and Miss Sylvia Reynolds looked in a deprecatory manner back at Colonel Reynolds, V.C.; while the dog in question—a foppish pug—happening to meet the colonel's eye in transit, crawled unostentatiously under the sideboard, and began to wrestle with ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... not disturb myself about a risk; but you've kept an invitation all this time under my tongue, not in my pockets, I assure you;" and Polly elaborately emptied them, the foppish breast pocket, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... grows heavy and tired of fun and noise; Leaves dress to the five-and-twenties and love to the silly boys; No foppish tricks at forty, no pinching of waists and toes, But high-low shoes and flannels and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... turns The point upon his own concerns. As no man of his own self catches 455 The itch, or amorous French aches So no man does himself convince, By his own doctrine, of his sins And though all cry down self, none means His ownself in a literal sense. 460 Beside, it is not only foppish, But vile, idolatrous and Popish, For one man, out of his own skin, To ferk and whip another's sin; As pedants out of school-boys' breeches 465 Do claw and curry their own itches. But in this case it is prophane, And sinful too, because in vain; For we must take our ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... a stiff neck and a sore throat), and I must break off with love to Bessie and the incipient Wenerableses. You will be glad to hear of your distinguished parent that Philadelphia has discovered that "he is not like the descriptions we have read of him at the little red desk. He is not at all foppish in appearance. He wears a heavy moustache and a Vandyke beard, and looks ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... in mockery, Blackbeard snatched a loaded pistol from one of his men and fired at this foppish young officer who presumed to single him out. The ball chipped Maynard's ear and he dodged the pistol which was hurled at his head. It was curious to note a lull in the general engagement, a little interval of suspense while men regained their breath or tried ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... she can't have too much money. There's twelve thousand pound, Tom. 'Tis true she is excessively foppish and affected; but in my conscience I believe the baggage loves me: for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers anybody else to rail at me. Then, as I told you, there's twelve thousand pound. Hum! Why, faith, upon second thoughts, she does not appear ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... in a whisper that "my uncle had come." I dressed rapidly, and, washing after a fashion, flew out of my bedroom without saying my prayers. In the vestibule I came upon a tall, solid gentleman with fashionable whiskers and a foppish-looking overcoat. Half dead with devout awe, I went up to him and, remembering the ceremonial mother had impressed upon me, I scraped my foot before him, made a very low bow, and craned forward to kiss his ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... he had done for England, how he had stood for her interests in the Commons, and won victories for her in foreign courts, and had penetrated and frustrated the designs of her enemies, gave him a splendid position in the esteem of English patriots. They even looked kindly upon his foibles, his foppish attire, his fondness for the turf, and his frivolous gayety, which shone undaunted when the national gloom was blackest. When he died there was a general belief that England had lost a son who had spared nothing in laboring for her aggrandizement, and he went to his last resting-place ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... plunging into the crowd, in the wake of her mother, the maids, and the porters. Ashton hastened after, in a vain attempt to overtake her. Crowds part easier before a pretty, smiling, fashionably dressed girl than before a foppish young man ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... touched with frost. Already had the snow begun to fall and the branches of the trees were covered with rime like rabbit-skin. Already on frosty days the robin redbreast hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish Polish nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children, with huge sticks, played hockey upon the ice; while their fathers lay quietly on the stove, issuing forth at intervals with lighted pipes in their lips, to growl, in regular fashion, at the orthodox frost, or to take the air, and ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of Cutts & Stropmore; but it was four o'clock, and Andre had gone to dress the hair of Elinora Checkynshaw. The banker was annoyed, vexed, angry. He wanted to see the boy who had left the office with the man "well-dressed, rowdyish, foppish." He did not know where Leo lived, and the barber had no business to be where he could not put his hand on him when wanted. Impatiently he drew on his overcoat, rushed out of the office, and rushed into the shop of Cutts & Stropmore. Mr. Cutts did not know ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... found a chair and lowered himself into it. Evidently, the foppish Balt Haer had no illusions about the spot his father had got the family corporation into. And the younger man was right, ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the grandeur of an essentially religious act. It is the utterance of the profoundest spiritual knowledge of a people. Moussorgsky was buoyed by the great force of the Russian charity, the Russian humility, the Russian pity. It was that great religious feeling that possessed the man who had been a foppish guardsman content to amuse ladies by strumming them snatches of "Il Trovatore" and "La Traviata" on the piano, and gave him his profound sense of reality, his knowledge of how simple and sad a thing human life is after all, and made him vibrate so exquisitely with the suffering inherent ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... for me, ye lambs, ye lambkins! bound, And frisk and frolic o'er the fairy ground. Secure, for me, thou pretty little fawn! 180 Lick Sylvia's hand, and crop the flowery lawn; Uncensured let the gentle breezes rove Through the green umbrage of the enchanted grove: Secure, for me, let foppish Nature smile, And play the coxcomb in the 'Desert Isle.' The stage I chose—a subject fair and free— 'Tis yours—'tis mine—'tis public property. All common exhibitions open lie, For praise or censure, to the common eye. Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed; 190 Hence Monthly ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... ravishingly exquisite, and offers a strange contrast to the "Requiescat," which is a dirge of the utmost largeness and grandeur. His graceful "Fly, White Butterflies," and "In Harbor," and the dramatic setting of "The Loreley," the jovial "Gather Ye Rosebuds" of jaunty Rob Herrick, the foppish tragedy of "La Vie est Vaine" (in which the composer's French prosody is a whit askew), that gallant, sweet song, "My True Love Hath My Heart," and a gracious setting of Heine's flower-song, are all noteworthy lyrics. He has set some of Tolstoi's words to music, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... and his two 15 or 16 year old twin sons have come to stay for the summer holidays in a Cornish fishing village. The two boys are very different. Arthur, or Taff, is very foppish and afraid of getting wet, hurt, or in any way inconvenienced. The other boy, Richard, or Dick, is the exact opposite, always running hither and thither, always wanting to get involved in anything that is going, ready to make ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... sought his acquaintance the very first week of the term,—that rather foppish young man who got off the cars at Hillsborough the day of their first coming. He was from Buffalo, and, although twenty-two years of age, was preparing to enter college. His tales of the big city and his frank good-fellowship ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... the young man utter a similar phrase and in such an accent. The image returned to him, by way of contrast, of Dorsenne, alert and foppish, the dandy of literature, so gayly a scoffer and a sophist, to whom antique and venerable Rome was only a city of pleasure, a cosmopolis more paradoxical than Florence, Nice, Biarritz, St. Moritz, than such and such other cities of international winter and ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... You have, however, permitted yourself certain expressions concerning his lordship here, which we cannot allow to remain where you have left them. You must retract, sir, or make them good." His gravity, and the preciseness of his diction now, sorted most oddly with his foppish airs. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Halifax. Although fond of horses, there was nothing about the appearance of Mr. Plaisted to suggest the jockey: he was what would have been termed in a later day a fair specimen of the genus dude. He was of medium height, and was decidedly foppish in his manner, and with his elaborate neck-ties and perfumed curls, he was, in his own estimation at least, quite irresistible. His hands and feet were unusually small for a man. The latter he was very proud ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... satisfied with the success of our experiment, Mr. Medlin," Mr. Bale said, next day. "Bob has turned out exactly what I hoped he would—a fine young fellow, and a gentleman. He has excellent manners, and yet there is nothing foppish, or affected ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... and their courage, they called them the jay-birds of the army; receiving favors which others deserved; obtaining cordons and promotions for carrying a few letters into camp, often without having even seen the enemy; insulting by their luxury the modest temperance of the braver officers; and more foppish in the midst of their battalions than in the boudoirs of their mistresses. The silver-gilt box of one of these gentlemen was a complete portable dressing-case, and contained, instead of cartridges, essence bottles, brushes, a mirror, a tongue-scraper, a shell-comb, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... as Peter's shadow fell between him and the sun, and dropped the yellow book with a slight start. For a moment neither of them spoke; they looked at each other in silence, the pale, shabby, dusty youth with his vivid eyes; the frail, foppish, middle-aged, worn-out man, with his pale face twitching a little and his near-sighted eyes screwed up, as if he was startled, or dazzled, or trying ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... slender, blonde, twenty-six, elegantly dressed, but appears in no respect foppish; he ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... loved a man,—a true, honest, brave, noble man,—not that perfumed, unprincipled, vain, foppish automaton, who adorns a corner of the diplomatic apartment where attaches of the American embassy 'most do congregate'! Gerard Granville is unworthy of any woman's affection, for maugre the indisputable fact that he is betrothed to a fond, trusting girl, now in the United States, he ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... these epithets kept returning to me as we talked. Her husband—she spoke of him as "poor Judson"—had been a carter and odd-job fellow, decent enough, I dare say, but hardly the man for her, I thought, after studying his portrait. There was a sort of foppish weakness in his face. And indeed his going seemed to have worked her no hardship, nor to have left any incurable ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... discoursed on the fact that her husband would not accompany her to the seaside; and then poured forth a flood of questions, as she could not make up her mind where to go. She did not ask for herself, however; no, it was all on Lucien's account. When the foppish youth Malignon came he seated himself astride a rustic chair. He, indeed, loathed the country; one must be mad, he would declare, to exile oneself from Paris with the idea of catching influenza beside the sea. However, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... hand, treated the officers and men under his command with a species of haughtiness and disdain. He seemed to regard them as very far beneath him, and to take pleasure in making them feel his vast superiority. He was vain and foppish in his dress, expended great sums in the adornment of his person, decorating his robes and vestments, and even his shoes, with gold and precious stones. In fact, he caused the manufacture of a garment to be commenced which he intended ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... all that thou wouldst, and even that thou wouldst not," answered De Marsay, with a laugh. He had recovered his foppish ease, as he took the resolve to let himself go to the climax of his good fortune, looking neither before nor after. Perhaps he counted, moreover, on his power and his capacity of a man used to adventures, to dominate this girl a few hours later and ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... themselves, were known to the weavers as the Claypots beggars; and their King was Jimmy Pawse. His regal dignity gave Jimmy the right to seek alms first when he chose to do so; thus he got the cream of a place before his subjects set to work. He was rather foppish in his dress; generally affecting a suit of gray cloth with showy metal buttons on it, and a broad blue bonnet. His wife was a little body like himself; and when they went a-begging, Jimmy with a meal-bag for alms on his back, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... much pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where innocence and virtue triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming mother, improved, and trained by a woman of fashion, had the elegant, dainty, foppish movements of a coxcomb. The compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a young girl possess a power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles, finding himself the object of the attentions of his aunt and ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... raised above his head, and a heavy, blackthorn stick lay across them. His dark, handsome, aquiline features were convulsed into a spasm of vindictive hatred, which had set his dead face in a terribly fiendish expression. He had evidently been in his bed when the alarm had broken out, for he wore a foppish, embroidered nightshirt, and his bare feet projected from his trousers. His head was horribly injured, and the whole room bore witness to the savage ferocity of the blow which had struck him down. Beside him lay the heavy poker, bent into a curve by the concussion. Holmes examined both ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... school. A chance to play a good joke was not to be missed. At one of the school entertainments, a student whom few liked was to take part. Relatives of his had given a large sum of money to the Academy, and on this account he somewhat lorded it over the other boys. He was, in addition, foppish in his dress, and on account of his money, position, and tailor, felt the country boys of the class a decided drawback to his social status. So the country boys decided to "get even," and they needed no other leader while Russell Conwell was about. Finally ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... of Presburg. Arline is seen asleep in the tent of the Queen, with Thaddeus watching her. After a quaint little chorus ("Silence, silence, the Lady Moon") sung by the gypsies, they depart in quest of plunder, headed by Devilshoof, and soon find their victim in the person of the foppish and half-drunken Florestein, who is returning from a revel. He is speedily relieved of his jewelry, among which is a medallion, which is carried off by Devilshoof. As the gypsies disappear, Arline wakes ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... your health, well, thank God," said the scripture teacher, Father Nikolay, a young priest in a foppish cinnamon-coloured cassock and trousers outside his boots. "You ought to rejoice, but you ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... attitude I could assume that a horrible discovery forced itself upon me. I happened to be regarding with a certain amount of languid interest a couple of promenaders, consisting of a very lovely girl and a somewhat foppish ensign, when I suddenly caught the eye of the latter fixed upon me. He raised his eye-glass to his eye, and, in the coolest manner in the world, deliberately surveyed me through it, when, in an instant, a broad smile of amusement—the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... through the main entrance; he is seventeen, slender, handsome, elegant, but not foppish; shows a charming, though somewhat boyish, forwardness, not quite free from embarrassment) Good ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... a month after we began our intimacy with this "government boarding-house" that our number was increased by a gentleman of cultivated manners and foppish costume. He was, perhaps, a little too much over-dressed with chains, trinkets, and perfumed locks, to be perfectly comme il faut, yet there was an intellectual power about his forehead and eyes, and a bewitching smile on his lips, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... "It sounds conceited and foppish, I know," pursued the young gentleman; "but you force me to it in self-defense. I never made love to Lady Louise, as Lady Louise can tell you, if ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... increasing years, his books seemed if anything to come thicker and faster. Two were published in 1878—La Saisiaz, his great metaphysical poem on the conception of immortality, and that delightfully foppish fragment of the ancien regime, The Two Poets of Croisic. Those two poems would alone suffice to show that he had not forgotten the hard science of theology or the harder science of humour. Another collection followed in 1879, the first series of Dramatic Idylls, which contain ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... slender, foppish man, iron-grey. Weldon sprang to his feet, pulling his right arm from behind him, wide, wide awake now. He was free! ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... seen of his evening clothes fitted scrupulously well. The Englishman, looking at him with alien, jealous eyes, decided within himself that the Frenchman with whom Sylvia seemed to be on such friendly terms, was a foppish-looking fellow, not at all the sort of man she ought to have "picked up" on ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... will, if their vanity be a ruling motive, eagerly swallow the most atrocious and fulsome praises. Look for the extremely short upper lip, for an excess of jewelry, a tendency to over-dress and extreme foppish methods of arranging the hair. Where you find one or more of these indications, you find the easiest road to favorable attention through the appetite of the individual for praise. If he is of the intellectual type, praise him for his smartness. If he ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... watch-chain, garnished with a profusion of rings and seals, hung low from his white waistcoat; and the adaptation of his nankeen inexpressibles to his well-shaped limbs was a masterpiece of art. His whole dress and air was not what could properly be called foppish, it was rather what at that time was called "rakish." Few could so closely approach vulgarity without being vulgar: of that privileged few, Mr. Vernon was one ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the flow of temporary population; some were farmer's taverns, —cheap, homely, and comfortable; others were magnificent hotels, with negro waiters, gentlemanly landlords in black broad-cloth, and foppish bar-keepers in Broadway coats, with chased gold watches in their waistcoat-pockets. I caught one of these fellows quizzing me through an eye-glass. The porters were lumbering up the steps with baggage from ...
— Sketches From Memory - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... laughing too. He was game, if he was unfortunate. He did not even decline the material enjoyment of lunch, and having led in the young Miss Katy, with a charmingly foppish air, took his seat at the table, which promised so much ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... station higher than his own. Absorbed in unsleeping political toil, he wore the outward garb of a careless, trifling voluptuary. It was difficult to believe that this apparently effeminate lounger, foppish in dress, with curled and scented hair, luxuriating in the novel refinement of the warm bath, an epicure in food and drink, patronizing actors, lolling in his litter amid a train of parasites, could be the man on whom, as Horace tells us, civic ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... hide a defect, and sometimes to heighten a beauty; but never to conceal, much less to distort, the charms to which they are subsidiary. The love of Petrarch, on the contrary, arrays itself like a foppish savage, whose nose is bored with a golden ring, whose skin is painted with grotesque forms and dazzling colours, and whose ears are drawn down his shoulders by the weight of jewels. It is a rule, without any exception, in all kinds of composition, that the principal ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... booted and ready to descend, there came a gentle tap at my door, and, in answer to my "Enter," there stood before me a very dainty and foppish figure. I stared hard at the effeminate face and the long fair locks of my visitor, thinking that I had become the dupe of ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... explained that in the city they were worn, and that silk was cool, but while he talked he was possessed by a kind of fury. For the first time the delicate garments, the luxurious toilet articles packed in his bag, seemed foppish, unnecessary, things for a woman. With all of them, he could not compete with this fair young god, who used a rough towel and a tin basin on the ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... the habit of selecting some of his lighter toilet articles for him, but this term he was trying for himself. Didn't she think his taste was good? He also slightly changed the cut of his hair and whiskers, to affect a foppish air, his theory being that all these external alterations would help out the effect of being a quite different person from the George Hunt with whom she had ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Peel family became renowned in their country's brilliant progress. But Harry Garland, the idle, foppish youth, who had his own way, and lived for pleasure, became a ruined spendthrift. The fact verifies the divine promise, "Honor thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise), that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer |
