Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A vain, talkative person.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A parrot.
- noun A woodpecker; especially, the green wood-pecker of Europe, Gecinus viridis.
- noun The figure of a parrot or other bird used as a mark for archery or firearms.
- noun In heraldry, a parrot used as a bearing: always, unless otherwise mentioned in the blazon, represented green, with red legs and beak.
- noun A coxcomb; a fop.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The green woodpecker.
- noun A parrot.
- noun Scot. A target in the form of a parrot.
- noun A trifling, chattering, fop or coxcomb.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
strutting supercilious person; acoxcomb ,dandy ,fop . - noun dated A
parrot - noun UK A
green woodpecker , Picus viridis. - noun A
wooden parrot, or similar object, stuck on a pole as atarget to be shot at. - noun A
heraldic (or other)representation of a parrot.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an archaic term for a parrot
- noun a vain and talkative person (chatters like a parrot)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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_Item_, a pair of hose of popinjay green (they be well called popinjay) of thirty shillings.
Joyce Morrell's Harvest The Annals of Selwick Hall Emily Sarah Holt 1864
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Hotspur's picture of this "popinjay" with pouncet-box in hand, and
The Man Shakespeare Frank Harris 1893
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Might Hooper and Seidler have considered making Logue do the "popinjay" speech by
The Guardian World News Peter Bradshaw 2011
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Words come to mind that I can't print in their entirety, that the tribunal is full of petty popinjay chickens**ts.
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A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
live-love-create Sam 2009
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Words come to mind that I can't print in their entirety, that the tribunal is full of petty popinjay chickens**ts.
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Leftists accused him of "betrayal," it continued, and quoted one who had described him as a "drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay".
Christopher Hitchens: He died too young, with too much left to say | Nick Cohen 2011
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Defending the absurd notion that the windbaggery of Mr. Galloway is somehow a threat to our national security, a spokesperson for the virginal Jason Kenney, Alykhan Velshi, referred to Gorgeous George as "someone who has provided financial support to Hamas, a banned terrorist organization in Canada, and someone who is, in a sense, a popinjay for those Taliban fighters who are trying to kill Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan."
Archive 2009-03-01 2009
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In 2005, George Galloway, UK Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, and ardent "pro-life" campaigner, famously referred to his arch-nemesis, Christopher Hitchens, as a "drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay."
Archive 2009-03-01 2009
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That said, I cannot imagine she got the run around from popinjay Hitchens.
arby commented on the word popinjay
NOUN: A vain, talkative person.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, parrot, from Old French papegai, from Spanish papagayo or Old Provençal papagai, both from Arabic bab’, baba’, from Persian babbagh.
July 18, 2007
reesetee commented on the word popinjay
Also a nickname for the Green Woodpecker. See also: yaffle.
December 7, 2007
garyth123 commented on the word popinjay
or fop
December 5, 2008