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Recent Examples of fancy-pants
Our city is a connect-the-dots map of marvels from hole-in-the-wall joints serving next-level noodles in Queens to fancy-pants French brasseries pouring freezer martinis from gilded carts in SoHo.
—
Andrea Strong, Bon Appetit Magazine, 10 Feb. 2026
Hotel-wise, the best place to be is either Kinloch Lodge, for belt-loosening cuisine and sing-worthy service, or Flodigarry Hotel, an off-compass outpost with a fancy-pants design bar and suites that wouldn’t look out of place in the Maldives.
—Mike MacEacheran, Condé Nast Traveler, 8 Sep. 2025
Partridge was dressed in classic English fancy-pants style, while Rodrigo embraced the vintage preppiness inherent to gingham.
—Kathleen Walsh, Glamour, 2 July 2025
The surprise of Clover Hill is not that this sort of food is on offer in an outer borough—with its concentration of zillion-dollar brownstones and fancy-pants residents, Brooklyn Heights isn’t exactly salt of the earth.
—Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 21 July 2024
With crust that's beautifully singed and wondrously puffed, the not-so-basic numbers are polished with fancy-pants ingredients—from Calabrian chile, fennel and sausage to a cacio e pepe riff made with velvety cream sauce, formaggi al pepe and pecorino.
—Brooke Viggiano, Chron, 12 Mar. 2023
Andrea Strong, Bon Appetit Magazine, 10 Feb. 2026
Hotel-wise, the best place to be is either Kinloch Lodge, for belt-loosening cuisine and sing-worthy service, or Flodigarry Hotel, an off-compass outpost with a fancy-pants design bar and suites that wouldn’t look out of place in the Maldives.
—Mike MacEacheran, Condé Nast Traveler, 8 Sep. 2025
Partridge was dressed in classic English fancy-pants style, while Rodrigo embraced the vintage preppiness inherent to gingham.
—Kathleen Walsh, Glamour, 2 July 2025
The surprise of Clover Hill is not that this sort of food is on offer in an outer borough—with its concentration of zillion-dollar brownstones and fancy-pants residents, Brooklyn Heights isn’t exactly salt of the earth.
—Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 21 July 2024
With crust that's beautifully singed and wondrously puffed, the not-so-basic numbers are polished with fancy-pants ingredients—from Calabrian chile, fennel and sausage to a cacio e pepe riff made with velvety cream sauce, formaggi al pepe and pecorino.
—Brooke Viggiano, Chron, 12 Mar. 2023
Recent Examples of Synonyms for fancy-pants
Adjective
-
She had been blamed for breaking up the greatest band of all time; her art was pretentious and nonsensical; her music was unlistenable.—
Sadie Sartini Garner,
Pitchfork,
21 Feb. 2026
-
And not to get too pretentious, but in a Greek theater setting, the archetypes these guys represent.—
Selome Hailu,
Variety,
21 Feb. 2026
Adjective
-
Ramon Ramirez Bloodsports This New York City band sings grandiose gutter rock that reminds you the human experience is suffering at every turn.—
Ramon Ramirez,
Austin American Statesman,
11 Mar. 2026
-
With an accent as slippery as Parker’s intentions for his client, Hanks feels adrift in Baz Luhrmann’s grandiose biopic, swallowed up by the spectacle around him.—
New York Times,
New York Times,
10 Mar. 2026
Adjective
-
And the less said of the poorly mixed, pompous Machina, the better.—
Kory Grow,
Rolling Stone,
3 Mar. 2026
-
The pompous clergyman enters the life of the Bennet family, his distant cousins, with the assumption that, given his respectable position and benefactor, Lady Catherine De Bourgh, one of those daughters would be happy to marry him.—
Jackson McHenry,
Vulture,
26 Feb. 2026
Adjective
-
Under-inflated tires actually force your vehicle to burn more fuel.—
Frankie McLister,
CBS News,
12 Mar. 2026
-
An analysis by a group of leading architects showed that only $329 million of that report’s $1 billion assessment for the city to remain in City Hall would be devoted to repairs, and even that estimate was, according to the architects, vastly inflated.—
Mark Lamster
Architecture Critic,
Dallas Morning News,
11 Mar. 2026
Adjective
-
Throughout the room are Atom Power’s purple EV charging stands and large white breaker boxes ready for assembly.—
Charlotte Observer,
Charlotte Observer,
11 Mar. 2026
-
During the rainy winter and early spring months, otherworldly photos of the park make the rounds online, showing brilliant yellow, pink, and purple blooms carpeting an otherwise lunar landscape.—
Cu Fleshman,
Travel + Leisure,
11 Mar. 2026
Adjective
-
When one steps through its doors, they are transported into an ornate palace that seems to exist outside of time.—
Timothy Nerozzi,
The Washington Examiner,
13 Mar. 2026
-
The more ornate tracks’ departure feels nearly as monumental—and often as successful—as Deafheaven’s shift to clean singing on Infinite Granite; the trad shoegaze feels like a retrenchment.—
Sadie Sartini Garner,
Pitchfork,
11 Mar. 2026
Adjective
-
Somehow, Jacob Elordi was able to pull a genuinely affecting performance out of this mess, which makes his nomination the only justifiable one of this movie’s bloated haul.—
Joe Reid,
Vulture,
10 Mar. 2026
-
Like many other tech companies, Block became bloated during the pandemic—its workforce more than tripled from 2019 to 2022.—
Lila Shroff,
The Atlantic,
10 Mar. 2026
Adjective
-
Unlike the stilted formality that can plague luxury properties, encounters feel genuine.—
Condé Nast,
Condé Nast Traveler,
26 Feb. 2026
-
Interviewing public figures can be a very stilted experience.—
Marc Weingarten,
Los Angeles Times,
21 Feb. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Fancy-pants.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/fancy-pants. Accessed 14 Mar. 2026.
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