Definitions

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  • noun Alternative spelling of Merry Andrew.; clown; buffoon.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat.

    Ulysses 2003

  • At length, a great hubbub arose among the mob; and a fellow, with the brass of a merryandrew, and the gravity of a quack-doctor, pressed through the throng, and approached the beast.

    Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 25, 1841 Various

  • It is hackneyed to say that "the clown that grins before the audience, who laugh with and at the merryandrew and his antics, is frequently weeping behind his mask;" yet, it is often the case.

    She and I, Volume 2 A Love Story. A Life History.

  • I could see you as in a picture, like the figure with the scourge in hand flying off the very ground, in Raffaelle's noble fresco, the Heliodorus; and now are you far more like a merryandrew in your mirth, and the quaint sly humour of the tale in verse has made you blind to the delinquencies of the quaffing Joan.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 Various

  • Mr. Sherman, coming to New York, fresh from college teaching, with the cultured disabilities of a learned clerk, had the reasonable notion that Marquis, a newspaper columnist, was just an amusing merryandrew.

    Christopher Morley writes about Don Marquis 1938

  • You may extol his songs of war and passion when he yearns to be esteemed a light, jovial merryandrew with never a care in the world save the cellar plumbing.

    Shandygaff Christopher Morley 1923

  • This last is a sort of ragged merryandrew, wearing a rusty old sword and bestriding a sorry hack.

    The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion 1922

  • This last is a sort of ragged merryandrew, wearing a rusty old sword and bestriding a sorry hack.

    Chapter 10. Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe 1922

  • He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat.

    Ulysses James Joyce 1911

  • This last is a sort of ragged merryandrew, wearing a rusty old sword and bestriding a sorry hack.

    The Golden Bough James George Frazer 1897

Comments

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  • "He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of woman, horseflesh, or hot scandal he had it pat."

    Joyce, Ulysses, 14

    January 20, 2007