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Jackanapes   Listen
Jackanapes

noun
(Written also jackanape)
1.
Someone who is unimportant but cheeky and presumptuous.  Synonyms: lightweight, whippersnapper.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Jackanapes" Quotes from Famous Books



... do need so much a little Brownie or a goblin to help me with my housework. Fancy going home with a dear little Jackanapes to carry my 'dinner pail'!" and at this suggestion every one seemed to enjoy the grotesque idea that Tavia ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... Mr jackanapes! sure of that. A'n't quite positive he'll have you, neither. Think ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... at him!" his father smiled. "He's grown so big he can lick his old dad. Well, let me tell you, my young jackanapes, that if anybody has said anything against your wife it ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... you mean, sir? I am young enough for you, sir. Just let me get ahold o' you, sir, and I'll show you, you young rascal! you dem jackanapes!" he ended, almost shrieking with rage, as he shook his fist in the face of ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... in a fury. What, he demanded, with half a dozen oaths, did Loman mean by coming there and assaulting him and his assistants? "What do you mean, you thieving jackanapes, you! Get out of my shop, do you hear? or I'll get some one in who will help you out! I'll teach you to come here and make yourself at home, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... feelings and not of mine. It's nothing to him that I may be fretting myself into my grave in the belief of his guilt; nothing that I may be dead years and years before he comes home with this precious fortune he relies on making. Oh no! we are all to wait another twenty years in order that this jackanapes may not be suspected of being mercenary; three dozen at the triangles would do him a world of good, and if ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... jackanapes! What is he thinking about?" exclaimed Reginald, who spoke loud enough for ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... more serious than I thought. There were tears in her eyes, and I led the Blight and the little sister home—conscience-stricken and humbled. Still I would find that young jackanapes of an engineer and let him know that anybody who made the Blight unhappy must deal with me. I would take him by the neck and pound some sense into him. I found him lofty, uncommunicative, perfectly alien to any consciousness that I could ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.

... "A rambling jackanapes of a nephew!" said Gilbert; "I hoped the fishes had supped on him before now. We never thought, master, he could be alive, as he sent no word about his being either alive or dead. But I guess," continued this amiable servant, "he might ha' staid longer, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... mandate reached me also!" cried Colonel Goldacker, laughing. "I simply showed the jackanapes the door, laughed him to scorn, and am come to get ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... nothing of the kind," returned Mr. Liddell, in a weak, hoarse, impatient voice. "I saw him once, and I know him; he is an ignorant, addle-pated jackanapes. He shall not muddle my affairs; send him away; I can wait for Newton. I don't suppose I am going ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... charge in the Queen's service. Your black guard are under ward. And if not, no French jackanapes shall ever brew his messes in my kitchen! Command honest English fare, madam, and if it be within my compass, you shall have it. No one shall be stinted in Walter Ashton's house; but I'll not away with any of your outlandish kickshaws. Come, what say you to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... exciting for Mother, and we must go away. Of course he really meant that Aunt Alma and Marina had better go away, but Aunt did not understand or would not. Why on earth did Aunt come? We hardly ever meet since the trouble about Marina and that jackanapes Erwin; only when there is a family party; Oswald says it's not a family gathering but a family dispersal because nearly always some ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... sometimes, and I've had many a chase after him when he was meddling with the chicks. The old hen nearly scratched his eyes out one day when he tapped the end of an egg to see if he could get the chick out. Lord, he was a jackanapes, surely; but we all made much ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... us, or that all the wild beasts in the country were coming to devour us. I could stand it no longer, but shrieked out, "O captain, captain! what's going to happen us?" The captain started up, and listened, and then burst into a fit of laughter. "Why, you young jackanapes, they are only some of your brothers, the monkeys, holding a morning concert," said he. "Go to sleep again; don't rouse me up for such ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... young jackanapes!" bellowed out Colonel Washington. "You dare to insult me before British officers, and find fault with my language? For months past I have borne with such impudence from you, that if I had not loved your mother—yes, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... last night," she reproached irritatedly, "I heard someone say: 'Oh, come on—we're scaring Mum to death!' The idea! 'scaring Mum!' I can tell you young jackanapes one thing: If I thought there was anything to be gained by it, or if it would save trouble instead of MAKING trouble, 'MUM' could go down there right now, old as she is, and SCARED as she is, and clean out the whole, measly outfit!" She stared sternly at the row ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... nice mess for a man of my position to find himself in! Do you know that I am now pointed out as the prospective father-in-law of a young jackanapes who goes about with a glass of grog in one hand and a pistol in the other. I am not accustomed to having my name bandied about and I won't have it—I live a life of great simplicity, minding my own business, and I want everybody else to mind theirs. The whole affair is ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... him, all flushed and panting. She hung back as if to stop him, and he caught the glistening of tears. Then he lost sight of her again. To be deserted the first minute he was alone with her, and for that jackanapes with the small head and the volcanic glances! It was too much! And suddenly it occurred to him that she was alone with Kasteliz—alone at night, and far from home. 'Well,' he thought, 'what do ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Fine trumpery indeed, these young men, for any one to fall in love with. Fine jackanapes and puppies for a woman to hanker after. I should like to know what relish anyone can find ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere

... to be a damned low vulgar comedian and tale of a trumpet up to the end, you Richmond? Don't think you'll gain anything by standing there as if you were jumping your trunk from a shark. Come, sir, you're in a gentleman's rooms; don't pitch your voice like a young jackanapes blowing into a horn. Your gasps and your spasms, and howl of a yawning brute! Keep your menagerie performances for your pantomime audiences. What are you meaning? Do you pretend you're astonished? She's not the first fool of a woman whose money you've devoured, with your "Madam," and "My dear" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "Young jackanapes!" Hyde muttered after him. "Lazy young devil! He ought to be with his regiment, marching and setting a good example to his men! We'll have our work cut out to win this war, if there are many of his stamp! And ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... of them holds on still, and to-day it advertised against Harrison's; and so there must be disputes which are genuine, like the strops for razors. I am afraid the little toad has not the true vein for it." Apparently, he hadn't, for later, referring to another number, Swift writes: "The jackanapes wants a right taste: I ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... "this is none of your affair, Monsieur Jackanapes. You are bound for the coast, I take it. Very well,—ka me, and I ka thee. Do you go your way in peace, and ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... the road, jackanapes, dressed in your grandfather's mail, unless you would stop there in the stocks. Do you know whose ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... go when I damned please, you Yankee jackanapes!" the Greek retorted through set teeth. Yerkes is a free man, able and willing to shoulder his own end of any argument. He closed, and the Greek's ribs cracked under a vastly stronger hug than he had dreamed of expecting. But Coutlass was no weakling either, and though he gasped he ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... Then pricked by a sudden thought he sat up in jealous rage. No-man's land? Yes, but the entire orchestra of fifty-two men were with her—and he hated the horn-player, for had he not intercepted poisonous glances between Luga and that impertinent jackanapes? In his torture Pobloff groaned aloud and wondered how he had reached his home: he could remember nothing after the ebon music had devoured his band. How did it come about? Why was he not drawn within the fatal whirlpool of sound? Or was he outside the fringe ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Voltaire and Frederick the Great. The patron is a man who patronizes—he wants something, and the particular thing that Dionysius wanted was to have Plato hold a colored light upon the performances of His Altruistic, Beneficent, Royal Jackanapes. But Plato was a simple, honest and direct man: he had caught the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... Walpoles, the Beechers, the Booths, the Bellinis, the Disraelis!" and here we begin to falter. And then the opposition takes it up and rattles off a list of great men whose sons were spendthrifts, gamblers, ne'er-do-wells and jackanapes. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... "An unprincipled, gambling little jackanapes!" said Dr. John curtly, "whom, with one hand, I could lift up by the waistband any day, and lay low in the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... should be glad if you could get one for me: not for the merit of the verses, which are moderate enough and faint imitations of our good poets; but for a short and sensible and genteel preface by La Piozzi, from whom I have just seen a very clever letter to Mrs. Montagu, to disavow a jackanapes who has lately made a noise here, one Boswell, by Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. In a day or two we expect another collection ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... several persons of consequence going in and out. And here at this inn, contrary to all expectation, I was received by the landlord with great civility, and even kindness—very contrary to the haughty and insolent airs which the upstart at the other, and his jackanapes of a waiter, there ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... the other two; if he take another, chop his head off with his own; and henceforth serve me all those losers of hatchets after that manner. Having said this, Jupiter, with an awkward turn of his head, like a jackanapes swallowing of pills, made so dreadful a phiz that all the vast Olympus quaked again. Heaven's foot messenger, thanks to his low-crowned narrow-brimmed hat, his plume of feathers, heel-pieces, and running stick with pigeon wings, flings ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... Marquess's depriving the court of Donna Laura's presence, their guest protested against it as an act of overt disloyalty to the sovereign; and what most surprised Odo, who had often heard his grandfather declaim against the Count as a cheap jackanapes that hung about the court for what he could make at play, was the indulgence with which the Marquess received his visitor's sallies. Father and daughter in fact vied in amenities to the Count. The fire was ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... command. Ha, and high time, too, for it! You idiots, where are you pointing your guns? What allowance have you made for windage? Why, at that elevation, you'll shoot yourselves. Up with your muzzles, you yellow jackanapes! Down on your bellies! Hand me the linstock! By the Lord, you don't even know how to touch ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore

... my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... that jackanapes who plays the lover in the Rodomontades of Captain Matamore? What in the world can HE have to say to Mme. la Marquise? Doubtless ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... to her," said Osmond; "I rather like Mrs. Touchett. She has a sort of old-fashioned character that's passing away—a vivid identity. But that long jackanapes the son—is ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... couldn't talk to you this morning and I've got to. It's for your own good, dearie; it is, so help me! Supposing he is a jackanapes. What do you want? A prize-fighter? Take it from me, whether he is one or the other, in no time it ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... would do for the stage, though I wish to see it acted; but, as Mrs. Pritchard[1] leaves the stage next month, I know nobody could play the Countess; nor am I disposed to expose myself to the impertinences of that jackanapes Garrick, who lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that of creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases. I have written an epilogue in character for the Clive, which she would speak admirably: but I am not so sure that she would like to speak it. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... Joseph Wilmot said, slowly and deliberately. "I've been down upon my luck for some time past, and I've just got a bit of money. I've got it honestly, mind you; and I don't want to be questioned by such a jackanapes as ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... You'll not join those jackanapes in their gambols during business hours. Order yourself up a slice of pie and a glass of buttermilk along with mine and sit down here to listen to matters of business by which you can profit. Luncheon and dancing! No, pie and business, ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the squire assented moodily. "Confound the young jackanapes, turning everything upside down, and upsetting us ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... learning both from popular tradition and from a library of such works as Bovet's Pandemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster Opened, Sinclair's Satan's Invisible World Discovered, whence he borrowed the name of the jackanapes in Wandering Willie's Tale, and the horse-shoe frown for the brow of the Redgauntlets, Heywood's Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, Joseph Taylor's History of Apparitions, from which he quotes in Woodstock. He was familiar ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... this opportunity to add to my flim-flam on pet-names in your late Number, that Jack appears to have been a common term to designate a low person, as "every Jack;" "every man-jack;" "Jack-of-all-trades?" "Jackanapes;" &c. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various

... this sweet woman that Cedric was talking in that cavalier fashion—with much affection certainly, but little reverence, after the manner of the nineteenth-century youth. More than once Malcolm muttered "Jackanapes" under his ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... have struck himself, banged his head against the walls! To think that he had believed in her innocence, in her purity! The Angel of Music! He knew him now! He saw him! It was beyond a doubt some unspeakable tenor, a good-looking jackanapes, who mouthed and simpered as he sang! He thought himself as absurd and as wretched as could be. Oh, what a miserable, little, insignificant, silly young man was M. le Vicomte de Chagny! thought Raoul, furiously. And she, what a bold ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... The familiar expression "Jackanapes" is evidently a corruption of the above. The term occurs in "The Merry Wives of Windsor": "I vill teach a scurvy jackanape priest to meddle or make."[63] The origin of the phrase in Jack-o'naibs, a Saracen game of cards, seems ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... could disburden his cares, his doubts, and his humours; an humble friend who would endure his caprices, and with whom he could communicate, free of all reserve and restraint. Though he loved his nephew's person, and admired his parts, he considered him often as a little petulant jackanapes, who presumed upon his superior understanding; and as for Sir Launcelot, there was something in his character that overawed the seaman, and kept him at a disagreeable distance. He had, in this dilemma, cast ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... or he would never have been chosen for the service upon which he is engaged. Men do not send fools to risk their lives; and I have been watching him for the last hour, and have observed how he bore himself under the tricks of that jackanapes, Jacob, and verily the wonder which I at first felt when he presented himself to me has passed away, and what appeared to me at first sight a strange imprudence, seems now to be a piece of wisdom. But enough of riddles," ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... wish I had you at sea, Mr. Jackanapes," said the admiral, looking grimly at his handsome nephew, while he ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... some very true things sometimes,' Mr. Swancourt said, turning to Stephen. 'Now, as regards that word "esquire." Why, Mr. Smith, that word "esquire" is gone to the dogs,—used on the letters of every jackanapes who has a black ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... did, at least, when I took that danseuse to a swell cabaret, Where expense was no consideration. A poet, you see, now and then must be gay. (I declined to give more, I remember, than fifty centeems to the waiter; For I asked him if that was enough; and the jackanapes answered— Peut-etre. Ah, it isn't in you to draw up a menu such as ours was, though humble: When I told Lady Shoreditch, she thought it a regular grand tout ensemble.) She danced the heart out of my body—I can see in the glare of the lights, I can see her ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... "That little jackanapes is still here," said Ivanoff, as be stared at Volochine. The latter had not noticed them, being so much interested in Sina, who walked first, that he turned round in passing to ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... this a tavern, knaves?" responded Nell, in a husky, mannish voice. "Do ye think this a vintner's? There are no topers here. Jackanapes, revellers; away with you, or we'll rouse the ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... oar, you little jackanapes," said she, "If you're well enough to be impudent you're well enough to go to work. You aint a goin' to lie here idle much longer, I can tell you. If you deceive Dr. Townsend, and make him believe you're sick, you can't deceive me. No doubt you feel mighty comfortable, lyin' here ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... flatly. "You don't know what a state he's in. I didn't tell you—he called me a spy in the house, a dirty spy. Likewise a jackanapes. Doubtless a delicate illusion to my ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... of four or five, to see him put off in his wherry, and sometimes go out for a sail with him on the sly when mother wasn't watching us, up to the time, as now, when I could help him with an oar. "None o' your imporence, you young jackanapes. But touching that there signallin', I'm surprised, sonny, you don't know by this time that when the commander-in-chief up at Admiralty House, in the dockyard, wishes for to communicate to some ship out at Spithead, he telegraphs from his office to the semaphore, which h'ists his orders, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... with no small anxiety by principals, masters and scholars alike. It marks an epoch in their lives, and is the only period of the year in which there is anything like a rapprochement between them, as if in the presence of some imminent crisis. The eccentric jackanapes who is by turns the butt and witling of the school stands for once consciously on equal terms with his principal, and can for once even "cheek" the school-bully with perfect impunity. All is excitement, anticipation, preparation and much consuming ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... this jackanapes, when I heard a stir in the crowd behind me, and another calling, "Who'll ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... saying of Napoleon, and is very just. It is difficult to understand the movements and motives of parties in a foreign country, and therefore Lord Melbourne does not feel able to pronounce any opinion upon the transactions in France. Lord Melbourne had seen G——'s letters, a pert jackanapes, who always takes the worst view of every subject, and does as much mischief as ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... not," broke in Jack. "She never would have chosen that jackanapes! If you hadn't spoiled my aim I'd have relieved her of ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... kickshaws—ay, and thought myself doocid lucky, I can tell you, if I didn't get a thrashing from one of the oldsters in the mess, if I grumbled, to make me relish my grub the better. Things are coming to a pretty pass nowadays for a young jackanapes to growl about his vittles and call his ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson



Words linked to "Jackanapes" :   nobody, cypher, whippersnapper, cipher, nonentity



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