Word: coxcomb
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
James McNeill Whistler's stock was going up. Bought from a Manhattan dealer by the Detroit Institute of Arts was the waspish Victorian dandy's famed Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket-the splattery nightscape that moved John Ruskin to a crack about "a coxcomb flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." (Bad Boy Whistler sued Ruskin for libel, won a farthing's damages.) Asking price for Nocturne that year (1875) was $1,000. Price reportedly paid by Detroit...
...Perelman like many another fledgling writer headed posthaste for Montparnasse. A redoubtable tosspot and coxcomb, he was celebrated throughout the Quarter for drinking Modigliani under the table; his fondness for this potent Italian apéritif still remains unabated. In 1925, disguised as Ashton-Wolfe of the Sûreté, he took to frequenting the milieu, the sinister district centering about the rue de Lappe. As 'Papa' Thernardier, he organized the gang that stole a towel from the Hotel Claridge and defaced the blotters at the American Express Co. A démarche from the Quai...
Rundstedt, the oldest, is also the best. Before the Nazis came to power, he was a stanch royalist, a faithful Hindenburg man. Now he is the Nazis' high priest of strategy. Belittlers of Chief of the High Command Wilhelm Keitel used to say that Keitel was such a coxcomb that he wouldn't even listen to Rundstedt. Rundstedt is easily the most experienced German commander. He alone of the present crop of generals was an Army Corps Chief of Staff in World War I. He will go down in German history as a hero because...