foppery

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He says--and he is speaking, you will please understand, as I speak, to a school of volunteer students--he says: "There is a piece of foppery which is to be cautiously guarded against, the foppery of universality, of knowing all sciences and excelling in all arts--chymistry, mathematics, algebra, dancing, history, reasoning, riding, fencing, Low Dutch, High Dutch, and natural philosophy.

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Definitions (8)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun Foolish quality or action.
  2. noun The dress or manner of a fop.

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Examples (50)

  • For absolute contempt is a quality of youth and ignorance—a foppery which a wise man rejects, and he rejected it accordingly. —  Charles Lamb
  • The disposition to derision and insult, is awakened by the softness of foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly trip, the stately stalk, the formal strut, and the lofty mien; by gestures intended to catch the eye, and by looks elaborately formed as evidences of importance Footnote 1: In the Spectator , No. —  Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1
  • But it is a good expression of that huge contempt for the foppery of high-flown sentiment which, as is not uncommon with Johnson, passes into something which would be cynical if it were not half-humorous. —  Samuel Johnson
  • A girl of his own age, whose heart-depths had not been sounded by experience, would have fallen in love with the foppery (or else despised it—which is often the same thing); but Mrs. Austen, mature in years, with a decade of London “seasons” behind her, having met every possible kind of man Europe had to offer, discovered that the world did not know Ben Disraeli at all. —  Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5
  • The question we point at is not this supposed foppery--was it such or not? —  The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1
 

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Etymologies (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from fop + -ery, after D. fopperij = German fopperei, vopperei, cheating, hoax, mystification.
 

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/ˈfɑpəri/
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