FOP

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Dr. Goodword
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FOP

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sun Oct 14, 2007 10:53 pm

• fop •

Pronunciation: fahp • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A prig, a male snob, a conceited fellow. 2. A prissy, vain guy overly concerned about the clothes he wears, a coxcomb, a dandy.

Notes: This word has a bit of an old-fashioned ring to it today but it is still available for use. It is a word you can have a lot of fun with. The behavior of a fop is foppery, for fops are, after all, foppish characters who act foppishly. The word is so short writers in the 17th century sometimes added an extension to be sure the word caught your attention: fop-doodle. Time to warm it up again?

In Play: We should save today's word for guys obsessed with their appearance who push stylishness in their dress too far: "Here comes that dreadful Art Dwecko again, dripping with jewelry and smelling like a perfume store!" It can simply refer to conceit, though: "Pierce Deer is such a fop he thinks his opinion is a gift."

Word History: Today's Good Word belongs solely to English, coming to us from our ancestral Germanic languages and was not borrowed. It is related to German foppen "to trick, deceive" and probably derived directly from that verb's English cousin, fob in the sense of fobbing something off on someone. Nothing is known about this word before it descended to the Proto-Germanic language which, unfortunately, was not recorded as well as ancient Latin and Greek. (Today's Good Word is due Amy Frits, who sent it in with an amusing story published today in the Language Blog].)
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Postby scw1217 » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:54 pm

I don't know which name is better, Art Dwecko or Pierce Deer! :lol:
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Postby Bailey » Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:05 pm

I thought it should have been Art Drekko, but no one asked me. actwally [sic]a nice lisp would be so metro-sexual..
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Postby gailr » Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:31 pm

I don't know which name is better, Art Dwecko or Pierce Deer! :lol:
Art Dwecko is not bad, but I would have gone for Art Deckle. Although he's not as well known as his cousin, Rip Torn.


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