coxcombry

• “The pistol had been bought and prepared for the purpose with the utmost nicety, not only for use but show; nor is it unfrequent to find in such instances of premeditated ferocity in design a fearful kind of coxcombry lavished upon the means.”

  The Disowned — Volume 08

• “He was of his own age, or a good deal younger, and from his dress and bearing might be of the same rank and calling, having all the air of coxcombry and pretension, which accorded with a handsome, though slight and low figure, and an elegant dress, in part hid by a large purple cloak.”

  The Abbot

• “The gallants of that age, disinterested, aspiring, and lofty-minded, even in their coxcombry, were strangers to those degrading and mischievous pursuits which are usually termed low amours.”

  The Monastery

• “The extravagances of coxcombry in manners and apparel are indeed the legitimate and often the successful objects of satire, during the time when they exist.”

  The Monastery

• “Many a young partridge who strutted complacently among the stubble, with all the finicking coxcombry of youth, and many an older one who watched his levity out of his little round eye, with the contemptuous air of a bird of wisdom and experience, alike unconscious of their approaching doom, basked in the fresh morning air with lively and blithesome feelings, and a few hours afterwards were laid low upon the earth.”

  The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

• “Moreover, his perpetual struggle with men and things leave them no time for the coxcombry of fashionable genius, which makes haste to gather in the harvests of a fugitive season, and whose vanity and self-love are as petty and exacting as a custom-house which levies tithes on all that comes in its way.”

  Modeste Mignon

• “And journalists have lavished upon this coxcombry praises which they have withheld from Newton and Locke, both worshippers of the Divinity from thorough examination and conviction!”

  A Philosophical Dictionary

• “Marsays, Ronquerolles, Ajuda-Pintos, and Vandenesses who shone there in all the glory of coxcombry among the best-dressed women of fashion in Paris — Lady Brandon, the Duchesse de Langeais, the”

  Father Goriot

• “He was already credited with the conquest of Mme. de Nucingen, and for this reason was a conspicuous figure; he caught the envious glances of other young men, and experienced the earliest pleasures of coxcombry.”

  Father Goriot

• “His next portrait was Lord Chesterfield, the observed of all observers, "the glass of fashion, and the mould of form," a man of talent unquestionably, and a master of the knowledge of mankind, but degrading his talent by the affectation of coxcombry, and turning his knowledge into a system of polished profligacy.”

  Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

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