dandy
/ˈdandi
/noun (plural dandies)
1A man unduly concerned with looking stylish and fashionable: his floppy handkerchiefs and antique cufflinks gave him the look of a dandy...
- In dramatic contrast to the soggy Paltrow figure, the Wanderer is immaculately attired in the fashionable dress of a dandy - black frock coat, trousers and cane.
- Originally a ‘buck’ was a dandy, a pretentious, overdressed show-off of a man.
- He is immaculate and was, one suspects, a bit of a dandy in his youth.
Synonyms
fop, beau, man about town, bright young thing, glamour boy, rake;
French boulevardier, petit-maître
informal swell, toff, dude, sharp dresser, snappy dresser, natty dresser, trendy, pretty boy
archaic blade, blood, buck, coxcomb, masher, peacock, popinjay, dapperling
2 informal, dated An excellent thing of its kind: the Winchester Model 37 shotgun is a dandy, at a low price
adjective (dandier, dandiest)
1North American informal Excellent: things are all fine and dandy...
- In this matter, they just think they have hit on another dandy idea for a ‘do-good’ crusade and a few neat bylines.
- If everything were fine and dandy we would not be racing this bill through the House.
- That's when we came up with the dandy idea of having not one, not two, but THREE little weddings.
2Relating to or characteristic of a dandy: ruffle-fronted dandy shirts...
- No one likes being picked on or singled out due to their appearance, especially when they're dandy actors likely bound for the mediocre lights of a Bollywood typecasting.
- Turpin's dandy appearance bewildered campaigners and Downing Street police officers, who eventually banished him from the houses of power - but his message struck a chord.
- Of course, according to the merciful judge at his subsequent trial, the dandy highwayman wasn't responsible for his actions that night as he had long suffered from manic depression.
Derivatives
dandyish
/ adjective ...- You've seen the last of Hosking in leather jackets and dandyish cravats interrogating pop bimbos under the guise of Sunday-night current affairs.
- This third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, played the character as a dandyish James Bond, with gadgetry and purple cloaks being the order of the day.
- This is the man's Edwardian aspect, formally old-fashioned and a little dandyish, that those who knew him in his later life fondly recall.
dandyism
/ noun ...- The rise of Brummell's dandyism, explains art historian Anne Hollander, marked the historical moment when men's clothes made the leap into democratic modernity.
- Eustache always retains a trace of dandyism, whereas Pialat is fundamentally a proletarian.
- Sometimes it embodied narrower military dandyism, as men sported rolled silk handkerchiefs instead of sword knots, slashed the seams housing the peaks of their caps to make them lie flatter, or shrank berets to eliminate floppiness.
Origin
Late 18th century: perhaps a shortened form of 17th-century Jack-a-dandy 'conceited fellow' (the last element representing Dandy, a pet form of the given name Andrew).
Dandies emerged in the late 18th century. The word is perhaps a shortened form of Jack-a-dandy, a 17th-century term for a conceited fellow, where dandy is a pet form of the name Andrew. The original dandies, such as Beau Brummel, were not flamboyant, but understated and elegant. They reacted against the wigs and knee breeches of an older generation, and pioneered the forerunner of the business suit. Dandy quickly became a term of approval for anything of high quality, a use which continues in US expressions such as fine and dandy. See also dude