Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Daintily fine; dainty.
- Pettily particular; precise in trifles; idly busy; especially, particular about dress.
- noun A sort of pigeon with a crest some-what resembling the mane of a horse.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective colloq. Precise in trifles; idly busy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective dated Excessively
dainty orfastidious . - noun Alternative form of
finnikin .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilettes, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world.
Vanity Fair 2006
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Leveson is as gentlemanly a fellow as the world contains, and if he has a fault, is perhaps too finikin.
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Heave we aside the fallacy, as punical as finikin, that it was not the king kingself but his inseparable sisters, uncontrollable nighttalkers, Skertsiraizde with Donyahzade, who afterwards, when the robberers shot up the socialights, came down into the world as amusers and were staged by Madame Sudlow as Rosa and Lily Miskinguette in the pantalime that two pitts paythronosed, Miliodorus and Galathee.
Finnegans Wake 2006
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There was an air of arrangedness about it; it might have been laid out according to plan, and on pleasing, but rather finikin lines; it was all exquisite, but just a trifle overdressed.
The Way Home 2003
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Amadis of Gaul, because he had a spirit that was equal to every occasion, and was no finikin knight, nor lachrymose like his brother, while in the matter of valour he was not a whit behind him.
Don Quixote 2002
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The Italian forms of Gothic Blackletters are generally too fussy and finikin to be of practical value for modern use, though they often possess suggestive value.
Letters and Lettering A Treatise With 200 Examples Frank Chouteau Brown
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The descent from sensitive, though always rather finikin, drawing through the tasteful and accomplished to the feebly forcible may be followed in the pots and vases of the sixth, fifth, fourth, and third centuries.
Art Clive Bell 1922
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His far-ranging work in Comparative Anatomy was based upon dissections by his own hand, executed rapidly and broadly, going straight to the essential point without any finikin elaboration, and recorded in very fine anatomical drawings.
Thomas Henry Huxley Huxley, Leonard, 1860-1933 1920
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The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilets, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascination, as any coquette in the world.
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She had but two maids with her, finikin lasses, with black eyes and broad bosoms, who set off their lady's more delicate beauty well.
Robin Hood 1917
sionnach commented on the word finikin
(a.) Precise in trifles; idly busy.
October 14, 2008