Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun plural Puppets animated by moving wires or mechanical means.
- noun plural A show using such puppets.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Puppets which are made to go through evolutions by means of concealed wires or strings.
- Dramatic representations in which puppets are substituted for human performers.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun plural Puppets caused to perform evolutions or dramatic scenes by means of machinery; also, the representations in which they are used.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Puppets caused to performdramatic scenes by means ofmachinery . - noun The puppet
shows in which they are used.
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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The rhyme was a common street-song which every lad in Milan, the city of puppet-shows, would recognize, and not only did it refer to the puppets as "fantoccini" instead of marionettes, but the significance of the last two lines, "Each for himself and the fiend for all," was rather too pointed to be pleasant.
Masters of the Guild L. Lamprey 1910
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But to do Mr. Davis justice, he did not make his _fantoccini_ suffer if he pulled the wires the wrong way.
Four Years in Rebel Capitals An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death T. C. DeLeon
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He had had no instructor, except "un pobre Italiano," who came to La Union with an exhibition of fantoccini, died there of fever, and was buried like a Christian in the Campo Santo adjoining the church: and Paganini removed his hat reverentially, and made the sign of the cross on his swarthy bosom.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860 Various
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Who work the contemptible fantoccini who gesticulate to the Ephesian hubbub of 'greatness' I neither know nor care, but it is simply out of credence that their motions are spontaneous.
My Contemporaries In Fiction David Christie Murray
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All of them alike -- fantoccini, skeletons, and quick folk -- were enveloped in the same grotesquely ghastly San Benito, with the same hideous yellow miters on their pasteboard, worm-eaten, or palpitating foreheads.
Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 The Catholic Reaction John Addington Symonds 1866
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Sharp unexpected touches evoke humanity in the fantoccini of his wayward art.
Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series John Addington Symonds 1866
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Then the Black Doctor, as blowed the bellows to the late ministerial organ, starts a fantoccini and collars our dialect.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, December 25, 1841 Various
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The Governor himself is a puppet, his trusted men of resource and portfolio-holders are the veriest fantoccini; for the Governor's own clerk pulls the strings, frames the foreign policy, conducts, controls, adjusts difficulties, and maintains a right balance between the parties.
The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 An Illustrated Monthly Various
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Sharp unexpected touches evoke humanity in the _fantoccini_ of his wayward art.
Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete Series I, II, and III John Addington Symonds 1866
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She was like a child seeing fantoccini for the first time: Margaret had seen the fantoccini dancing all her life.
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