Example Sentences
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 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
-
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
-
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
-
The film chronicles a rich fop who studies a magic manual and teaches himself how to achieve X-ray vision and clairvoyance.—
The New Yorker,
The New Yorker,
29 Sep. 2023
Cite this Entry
“Popinjay.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/popinjay. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share