Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Dalliance; flirtation.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Effort to attract admiration, notice, or love, from vanity or for amusement; affectation of amorous tenderness; trifling in love.
- n. Synonyms See flirtation.
Wiktionary
- n. An affectation of amorous tenderness, especially of a woman directed towards a man.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Attempts to attract admiration, notice, or love, for the mere gratification of vanity; trifling in love.
WordNet 3.0
- n. playful behavior intended to arouse sexual interest
Etymologies
- From coquette + -ry (Wiktionary)
- French coquetterie, from coquette, coquette; see coquette. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“When he was gone, she scolded me, and reproached me with what she called my coquetry and imprudence; I could not bear her injustice, and very rashly replied, that no one had a right to blame me when my own conscience absolved me.”
“And what if I tell you that I know it -- that in the very employment of the arts of what you call coquetry, I am but exercising those powers of pleasing by which men are led to frequent the salon instead of the café, and like the society of the cultivated and refined better than --”
“Love has its piece of bread, but it has also its science of loving, that science which we call coquetry, a delightful word which the”
“Still, pleasant as her recollections were, she often looked back self-reproachfully upon passages of her youth; and Sainte-Beuve, though he calls her coquetry "_une coquetterie angelique_," recognizes it as a blemish.”
“I dread that she should acquire preposterous notions of love, of happiness, from the furtive perusal of vulgar novels, or from the clandestine conversation of ignorant waiting-maids: – I dread that she should acquire, even from the enchanting eloquence of Rousseau, the fatal idea, that cunning and address are the natural resources of her sex; that coquetry is necessary to attract, and dissimulation to preserve the heart of man.”
Letters for Literary Ladies: To Which is Added, An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification
“Bell Fermor and her lover: your friend has been indiscreet; her spirit of coquetry is eternally carrying her wrong; but in my opinion Fitzgerald has been at least equally to blame.”
“He called my attention to what he led me to term coquetry between my wife and this young man.”
“Because a handsome girl has had a spark of coquetry, that is no reason. &cdq;”
“I would not have invited the reader's attention to so trivial a matter, but to remark that everything is becoming to the beautiful; for indeed this peasant girl showed, in everything she said and did, a certain natural grace which could not be called coquetry unless you will so call an innate unconscious instinct.”
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 5
“Your prudence will suggest to you, "she added," that coquetry, which is not defensible in a maiden, is still more inexcusable in a wife.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘coquetry’.
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Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 268 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Kangaroo Words
Words containing letters in sequence, together or apart, that form a definition or instance of the subsuming word. E.g., conTAmINaTe = the kangaroo word. TAINT = the joey. Theme from a NYT X-word ...
encourage, chariot, precipitation, neurotic, feaster, unsightly, charisma, inheritor, masculine, honorable, contaminate, regulate and 103 more...
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Slam Fodder
Those words that will inevitable end up in a Slam Poem
feel free to challenge me!:)bumptious, gamekeeper, slamily, burbuliatorius, cryptomnesia, paradox, pulchritudinous, mimetic, anhedonia, skelf, rampike, furlough and 84 more...
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MiaLuthien's list ♥
gambit, prehensile, coquetry, impunity, genuflect, ensconce, clavicle, delude, beget, castigate, life caching, convoluted and 478 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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Madame Bovary
Some good words (chiefly French of origin, and often to do with the medical profession) encountered reading the Aveling translation -- mostly new to me, but a few words that are just worthy of bein...
tulle, argand, friable, corolla, lives of stir, difficile, rime, inveigh, feuilleton, peristyle, refulgence, wainscoting and 98 more...
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use•ful
palmary, glossolalia, bothum, high-proof, synesthesia, odious, autochthonous, yawp, mordacious, dynamo, dishevel, titely and 414 more...
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kevincooper's Words
prosopopeia, lisle, magisterial, zeitgeist, zeugma, bloviate, apocryphal, bon mot, cacophony, euphony, brigandier, micturition and 313 more...
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Favourite Words
sanguine, irk, pith, venerate, anomaly, reprobate, ethereal, antediluvian, obfuscate, wistful, plethora, absinthe and 108 more...
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zetadiction
words that embody life
hydrae, kleptocracy, curmudgeon, wordie, risotto, qi, pulchritudinous, micropolitan, schadenfreude, neolithic, experimentalist, zeta and 477 more...
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Love
A general collection of the sort of words that make me happy when I hear or read them in everyday conversation and writing.
velleities, discombobulated, boggle, breathtaking, enchanting, siren, luscious, moment, fiasco, delirium, darling, ethereal and 215 more...
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Flirtation, Affairs, and Flattery
Sort of Rococo-style affairs
dangleation, sawder, badinage, bavardage, philander, coquette, fop, frippet, trifler, puffery, frothy, palaver and 30 more...
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Polymorphously Pretentious Patois
epicurean, hermitage, virago, aplomb, riposte, undulate, calliope, terpsichore, polyphonic, quixotic, sanguine, chimera and 81 more...
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senihele's Words
phantasmagoric, spectral, postlapsarian, exsanguinate, chimera, venesection, arcanum, pseudonymity, eschatology, ansible, sublunary, nepenthe and 55 more...
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Sexy and saucy words!
glabrous, gamine, svelte, toothsome, assignation, intrigue, ravish, besotted, dissolute, tumescence, coquette, coquet and 66 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for coquetry.

oroboros COquetrY May 13, 2008