Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of coxcombThe doctor was a large, hale man, with a coxcomb of thinning red hair.—Adam O’Fallon Price, Harper's magazine, 10 June 2019
Robin Hood and the avenging bandido Murrieta, as well as novelist Baroness Orczy’s entirely fictional Scarlet Pimpernel, the secret identity of the British popinjay who saves French aristocrats from the Reign of Terror.
—
Washington Post,
Washington Post,
1 Jan. 2021
There was a tiny popinjay of a man with a Windsor knot and a pink tie.
There’s a version of Lysander that is done as a British fop.
—
Brian Davids,
HollywoodReporter,
3 Apr. 2026
The New Yorker loves and fetishizes its traditions (the monocled fop Eustace Tilley, that stately but sensual Adobe Caslon font), but the magazine’s ultimate tradition is cutting through the scrim of contemporary noise to look reality in the eye, presenting it to the reader with a no-fuss vibrance.