minauderies

In the upper story of the grand gallery at Versailles, hang several pictures representing these court ballets; Cupids in coatees of pink lustring, with silver lace and tinsel wings, wearing full-bottomed wigs and the riband of the St Esprit; or Venuses in hoops and powder, whose _minauderies_ might afford a lesson to the divinities of our own day for the benefit of the omnibus box.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844 Various

Tell her that I desire her to abstain from such follies; she must not desecrate the buskin by the _minauderies_ of

Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia F. [Translator] Jordan

I should never make this charge, for, to me, Madame Plessy’s minauderies, her grand airs and her arch-refinements, have never been anything but the odorous swayings and queenly tossings of some splendid garden flower.

The Théâtre Francais 1914

_Vera incessu patuit -- Corona_; walked, too, without airs or _minauderies_, unconscious of all but the solemn glory.

Brother Copas Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

Then there is the affectation pure and simple, which is the mere affectation of manner, such as is shown in the drawling voice, the mincing gait, the extreme gracefulness of attitude that by consciousness ceases to be grace, and the thousand little _minauderies_ and coquetries of the sex known to us all.

Modern Women and What is Said of Them A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) Lucia Gilbert [Commentator] Calhoun 1860

Miss Quaver, with her staccato notes and semi-professional _minauderies_, is not exactly a queen of song.

Modern Women and What is Said of Them A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) Lucia Gilbert [Commentator] Calhoun 1860

Presently, in the midst of her minauderies, she gave a loud shriek and bounded out of her chair like hare from form, and ran backwards out of the room uttering little screams, and holding her farthingale tight down to her ankles with both hands.

The Cloister and the Hearth Charles Reade 1849

I have seen your goddess dance once, and I am weary of her pirouettes and minauderies.

Berlin and Sans-Souci; or Frederick the Great and his friends 1843

Julian was under the necessity of enduring all her tiresome and fantastic airs, and awaiting with patience till she had “prinked herself and pinned herself” — flung her hoods back, and drawn them forward — snuffed at a little bottle of essences — closed her eyes like a dying fowl — turned them up like duck in a thunderstorm; when at length, having exhausted her round of minauderies, she condescended to open the conversation.

Peveril of the Peak 1822

He gave an account of the first, from which the drama might have been written down had fate destroyed it: and had noticed the _minauderies_ of the heroine, and the eager determination not to be second to her in anything which distinguished the first gentleman, as if he had nothing else in his mind: while all the time he had been under the fascination of the two black eyeholes _braqués_ upon him, the mysterious gaze as of a ghost from eyes which he never saw.

The Marriage of Elinor 1862