> as lemmas

1700 S. Wesley Epist. Poetry 5 Style is the Dress of Thought; a modest Dress, Neat, but not gaudy, will true Critics please.

1806 C. Lamb Let. 26 June in Lett. C. & M. A. Lamb (1976) II. 232 A little thin flowery border round, neat not gaudy.

1838 J. Ruskin in Archit. Mag. Nov. 484 That admiration of the ‘neat but not gaudy’, which is commonly reported to have influenced the devil when he painted his tail pea-green.

1849 W. M. Thackeray Pendennis (1850) I. xiii. 116 ‘You seem to like my dressing-gown, sir,’ he said to Mr. Tatham. ‘A pretty thing, isn't it? Neat, but not in the least gaudy.’

1887 Lippincott's Monthly Mag. July 116 I have sent, I say, just such manuscript as editors call for, fair, clean, written on one side, not with a pencil,..the whole thing ‘neat, but not gaudy, as the monkey said’ on the memorable occasion ‘when he painted his tail sky-blue’.

1892 Society 6 Aug. 757/1 Tennyson when in a rage is neat and not gaudy.

1974 L. Deighton Spy Story xxi. 222 If Toliver complains to the Home Secretary you say it was the C.I.A. doing it. Neat, but not gaudy.

1991 J. Cooper Polo 178 Just let me brush your hair back and put on this Alice band. There! Don't you look charming? Neat but not gaudy.