Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of popinjay
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, 1 Jan. 2021
There was a tiny popinjay of a man with a Windsor knot and a pink tie.
—Rebecca Keegan, VanityFair.com, 21 Jan. 2017
Washington Post, 1 Jan. 2021
There was a tiny popinjay of a man with a Windsor knot and a pink tie.
—Rebecca Keegan, VanityFair.com, 21 Jan. 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for popinjay
Noun
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The doctor was a large, hale man, with a coxcomb of thinning red hair.—
Adam O’Fallon Price,
Harper's magazine,
10 June 2019
Noun
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There’s a version of Lysander that is done as a British fop.—
Brian Davids,
HollywoodReporter,
3 Apr. 2026
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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.—
Owen Gleiberman,
Variety,
1 Dec. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Popinjay.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/popinjay. Accessed 14 Apr. 2026.
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