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Periwig   Listen
Periwig

noun
1.
A wig for men that was fashionable in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Synonym: peruke.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Periwig" Quotes from Famous Books



... One was small and slight, as simply dressed as a gentleman of the period could be; another was clad in a gay coat with a good deal of fluttering ribbon and rich lace; the third, a tall well-made man, had a plain walking suit, surmounted by a flowing periwig and plumed beaver. Coming close beneath Peregrine's tree, and standing with their backs to it, they eagerly conversed. "Such a cascade will drown the honours of the Versailles fountains, if only the water can be raised ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lines. Nor do not saw the air too much—your hand thus: but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I could have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... recognised, from his obesity, the peculiarity of his long flowing periwig, and his black velvet Parisian pourpoint, which contrasted forcibly with the glittering habiliments of his companions, was Doctor Mayerne-Turquet, the celebrated French professor of medicine, then so high in favour with James, that, having been loaded with honours and dignities, he had ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... questions, he says, "Before I could make any answer, I chanced to turn my eyes upon a person whom I had not before observed, who sat very gravely upon a chair in a corner of the room, with a large periwig in full dress upon his head. The marquis, seeing my surprise at the sight of this unknown person, after a very hearty fit of laughter, begged pardon for not having introduced me sooner to that gentleman (who was no other than a large monkey), and then told me, he had the honour of being ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... not penetrate very deeply into a subject, he professes a very gentlemanly acquaintance with it; if he makes rather a parade of Latin, it was the custom of his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelope his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... everything to the skies, clearing his way with his fists, wearing a disordered periwig, swearing, shouting, joking, never dirty, and, at need, ready to blacken an eye or pay for ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... scarlet coat, rising to the trot of his horse, clashed through the soft gold-green mists and radiances of the spring landscape like the blare of a trumpet; his gold buttons glittered; the long plume on his hat ruffled to the wind over his fair periwig. Wigs were not so long in fashion, but Sir Humphrey was to the front in his. Mary Cavendish and Sir Humphrey rode on abreast, and I behind far enough to be cleared of the mire thrown by their horse-hoofs, and my heart was full of that demon of jealousy ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the ax of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, through the sweepings ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... think I maun hae made a queer figure without my hat and my periwig, hanging by the middle like bawdrons, or a cloak flung ower a cloakpin. Bailie Grahame wad hae an unco hair in my neck an he got that tale by ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... portrait of his "dear grandfather," as represented in the elaborate gilt frame in the dining-room, in a court suit and a periwig, and with an abominable simper, most devoutly thanks his gods that he is not like unto him. He is, indeed (feeling goaded to the last degree), about to break into unseemly language, when, fortunately, the arrival of the ancient ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... thought, tete-a-tete with Voltaire. The malade de Ferney, personated by our young friend, was lying down on a sofa, wrapped up in a damask robe-de-chambre, a night-cap of black velvet, with gold lace, on his head, or rather on the top of an immense periwig, a la Louis XIV., in the midst of which his little, sallow and deeply-wrinkled visage seemed buried; a table was near him, covered with papers, and the curtains being drawn, made the room rather dark. The philosopher ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... Hamlet was little more than an opportunity for some robustious periwig-pated fellow, or it gave the semi-learned actor the chance to conceal his imaginative incapacity by a display of "new readings." ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... spire. "Then he, great tamer of all human art! First in my care, and ever at my heart; Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my Muse began, with whom shall end, Ere since Sir Fopling's periwig was praise, To the last honours of the Butt and Bays: O thou! of bus'ness the directing soul! To this our head like bias to the bowl, Which, as more pond'rous, made its aim more true, Obliquely waddling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... solemn hour—thinking it needless to say more—that it was answerable to the greatness of his life. Thus he walked in dignity, guards of soldiers sometimes attending him in his walks, subalterns bowing before his periwig; and when he uttered his thoughts they were suitable to his state and services. On February 8, 1668, we find him writing to Evelyn, his mind bitterly occupied with the late Dutch war, and some thoughts of the different story of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... wild fellow with a steel hook in place of his left hand, d'ye see, and Bartlemy a slender, dainty-seeming, fiendly-smiling gentleman, very nice as to speech and deportment and clad in the latest mode, from curling periwig ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... military-looking suit of green, he had on a long-waisted broad-cut coat of black, with jet buttons; a light-coloured periwig filled full of powder; black breeches and silk stockings, and a light black-hilted sword. In fact, he bore much more the appearance of a French lawyer of that day than anything else. The features, indeed, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... kinghood—who never moved but to measure, who lived and died according to the laws of his Court-marshal, persisting in enacting through life the part of Hero; and, divested of poetry, this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a great periwig and red heels to make him look tall—a hero for a book if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god in a Roman shape, but what more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... devoted servant. So the pair set out in the morning for their wild tramp. To prevent discovery the Prince affected to be Malcolm's servant, walked behind him, and, further to disguise himself, put his periwig in his pocket and bound a dirty cloth round his head—a disguise specially calculated, one would think, to excite attention. The two young men talked frankly and confidentially, making great strides in friendship as they went along. Once a covey of partridges rose, and, with a true British instinct ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... fashionable dress. What is that which some call land but a fine coat faced with green, or the sea but a waistcoat of water-tabby? Proceed to the particular works of the creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature hath been to trim up the vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch. To conclude from all, what is man himself but a microcoat, or rather a complete suit of clothes with all ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... high price obtained for the last year's crop. Then the factor proceeded to give a bill of sales, and then a list of things purchased for Browne and his family, with the price set down for the hoop skirt and the new bonnet and the silk frock, as well as for a cocked hat and dress periwig necessary to Sanford Browne's increasing dignity, and some things for the little Sanford. Browne studied each successive page of the letter in hope of finding a word on the subject in which he was most deeply interested, stopping reluctantly now and then ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... French periwigs!" he shouts, jangling his bell and putting himself across M. Radisson's course. "You'd please to lack a periwig, sir! Walk this ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... gown the village streets Strange are the forms my fancy meets, For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, And through the veil of a closed lid The ancient worthies I see again: I hear the tap of the elder's cane, And his awful periwig I see, And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, His black cap hiding his whitened hair, Walks the Judge of the great Assize, Samuel Sewall the good and wise. His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... trod until they came to fight there. Or, the travelled American, the petit- maitre of the colonies,—the ape of London foppery, as the newspaper was the semblance of the London journals,—he, with his gray powdered periwig, his embroidered coat, lace ruffles, and glossy silk stockings, golden-clocked,—his buckles of glittering paste, at knee-band and shoe- strap,—his scented handkerchief, and chapeau beneath his arm, even ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... old, his hair fell off, and he became bald; to hide which imperfection he wore a periwig. But as he was riding out with some others a-hunting, a sudden gust of wind blew off the periwig, and exposed his ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... downy chins, dapper shapes; nay, sometimes on charms more worthless than these, and less the party's own; such are the outward ornaments of the person, for which men are beholden to the taylor, the laceman, the periwig-maker, the hatter, and the milliner, and not to nature. Such a passion girls may well be ashamed, as they generally are, to own either ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... Walpolianae at Sir Luke Schaub's, and sent by him to desire one. I sent him one bound quite in coronation robes, and went last Sunday to thank him for the honour. There were all the new knights of the garter. After the prince had whispered through every curl of lord Granville's periwig, he turned to me, and said such a crowd of civil things that I did not know what to answer; commended the style and the quotations; said I had sent him back to his Livy; in short, that there were but two things he disliked—one, that I had not given it to him of my own accord, and the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... thus: A middle-aged gentleman is fitting in a magnificent apartment, between an old lady and a young one, fashionably dressed. His head is entirely bald, the old lady having just pulled out the black hairs, as the young one did the grey: and Cupid is flying over his head, holding a nice periwig ready to ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss

... no joke to me." Is this a bad proof of her sense? On the journey they wanted her to curl her toupet. "No, indeed," said she, "I think it looks as well as those of the ladies who have been sent for me: if the King would have me wear a periwig, I will; otherwise I shall let myself alone." The Duke of York gave her his hand at the garden-gate: her lips trembled, but she jumped out with spirit. In the garden the King met her; she would have fallen at his feet; he prevented and embraced her, and led her into the apartments, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... of 48 men and 16 horsemen) fired upon this little handful, which he thinks amounted to not above 18 that had arms, with a few women. After several fires were returned on both sides, one of the sufferers stepped forward, and shot one side of the captain's periwig off, at which the foot fled; but the horsemen, taking the advantage of the rising ground, surrounded this small party. They then fired on a young man, but missed him. However, they took him and some others prisoners. The rest fled off. Robert Garnock ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... own imagination. Shakespeare has set himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation then prevailing among the fair, the witty, and the learned, and he has imitated it but too faithfully. It is as if the hand of Titian had been employed to give grace to the curls of a full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures in the House of Lords. Shakespeare has put an excellent description of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of the critical Holofernes 'as too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... Mendelssohn. He died nearly sixty years ago; yet, whatever we may think of him as a composer, we can scarcely call him old-fashioned: he remains indisputably one of the moderns. Now, Wagner can never have looked upon Bach as a modern. He spoke of him and his old periwig almost as one might allude to an extinct race of animals. The history of an art cannot be measured off in years: in some periods it moves slowly, in others with startling rapidity. Since Mendelssohn's ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... everything upon, in this city!' thought I. 'The utmost stretch of an English periwig-maker's ideas could have gone no farther than to have dipped it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... sailed home to Boston, "a man of strong and sturdy frame," as Hawthorne fancied him, "whose face had been roughened by northern tempests and blackened by the burning sun of the West Indies.... He wears an immense periwig flowing down over his shoulders.... His red, rough hands which have done many a good day's work with the hammer and adze are half-covered by the delicate lace rues at the wrist." But he carried with him the manners of the forecastle, a man hasty and unlettered but superbly brave and ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... poet-surgeon, laden with his secrets and his confidences. Why did he not write memoirs, and tell us what it was that drove Nat Lee mad, and how Otway really died, and what Dryden's habits were? Why did he not purvey magnificent indiscretions whispered under the great periwig of Wycherley, or repeat that splendid story about Etheredge and my Lord Mulgrave? Alas! we would have given a wilderness of Sertoriuses for such a ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings[2]; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show, and noise. I would have such a fellow ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... 'a hogshead of claret,' were presented to courtiers and friends who did the Company a good turn. Servants were treated with a paternal care. Did a man lose a toe on some frosty snow-shoe tramp, the Governing Committee solemnly voted him 'L4 smart money,' or 'L1 for a periwig,' or 'L10 a year pension for life.' No matter to what desperate straits the Company was reduced, it never forgot a captain who had saved a cargo from raid, or the hero of a fight, or a wood-runner who had carried trade inland. For those who ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... the winter's keener breath began To crystalize the Baltic ocean; To glaze the lakes, to bridle up the floods, And periwig ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... in the south, And a man of the south that was wise, A periwig'd lord of London, {3b} Called on the clans to rise. And the riders rode, and the summons Came to the western shore, To the land of the sea and the heather, To Appin and Mamore. It called on all to gather From every scrog ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... lounging. Of the latter was his Grace of Wharton. He was a slender, graceful gentleman, whose face, if slightly effeminate and markedly dissipated, was nevertheless of considerable beauty. He was very splendid in a suit of green camlett and silver lace, and he wore a flaxen periwig ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... Great tamer of all human art! First in my care, and ever at my heart; Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my Muse began, with whom shall end, E'er since Sir Fopling's periwig[271] was praise, To the last honours of the butt and bays: O thou! of business the directing soul; To this our head, like bias to the bowl, 170 Which, as more ponderous, made its aim more true, Obliquely waddling to the mark in view; Oh, ever gracious to perplexed ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... different side from our nineteenth-century poets. Their classicism was of a special type. It was, as has been often pointed out, more Latin than Greek, and more French than Latin.[6] It was, as has likewise been said, "a classicism in red heels and a periwig." Victor Hugo speaks of "cette poesie fardee, mouchetee, poudree, du dix-huitieme siecle, cette literature a paniers, a pompons et a falbalas."[7] The costumes of Watteau contrast with the simple folds of Greek drapery very much as the "Rape of the Lock," contrasts ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers and topgallants; utere velis totes pande sinus. A gentleman in our late civil wars, when his quarters were beaten up by the enemy, was taken prisoner and lost his life afterwards, only by staying to put on a band and adjust his periwig. He would escape like a person of quality, or not at all, and died the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility. I think your counsel of festina lente is as ill to a man who is flying from the world, as it would have been to that unfortunate well-bred gentleman, who was so cautious as ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley



Words linked to "Periwig" :   wig



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