Word.ws English Dictionary

Basil Fawlty

Basil Fawlty noun: a self-important and obnoxious man, often a shop or hotel owner.

Noun

Basil Fawlty (plural Basil Fawlty's)

  1. A self-important and obnoxious man, often a shop or hotel owner.
    • Armond is the Basil Fawlty of the 21st Century! Starts like this and ends like this:2025 July 4, ScowlyBrowSpinster, “Armond is the Basil Fawlty of the 21st Century! Starts like this and ends like this:”, in reddit.com
    • Steve Bloom, of Bloomindales book shop, was dubbed the “Basil Fawlty of books” after visitors made more than 20 complaints about his behaviour to the local parish council.2017 July 17, Alexa Fox, “Rude bookseller dubbed the 'Basil Fawlty of books' sells his Hawes shop”, in The Northern Echo, archived from the original on 06 Aug 2026

Examples of Basil Fawlty in a sentence

  • He has become the Basil Fawlty of Europe.2019, Dr. Eileen Metcalfe, The Wit and Humour of William Hague:
  • I drive back towards Martinborough and discover the Basil Fawlty of the New Zealand wine world.2020, Graham Mitchell, The Wine Explorer: A Guide to the Wines of the World and How to Enjoy Them, University of Buckingham Press:
  • By the time I left my first teaching post, I was known as the Basil Fawlty of my school, the man with the manic energy, with two briefcases and three distinct job titles.1991, John Button, The Best Of Resurgence: A Selection from the First Twenty-Five Years, Lilliput Press:

Forms of Basil Fawlty

pluralBasil Fawlty's

Origin of Basil Fawlty

From the character Basil Fawlty from the television show Fawlty Towers.

Questions about Basil Fawlty

What does Basil Fawlty mean?
Basil Fawlty means a self-important and obnoxious man, often a shop or hotel owner.
How do you use Basil Fawlty in a sentence?
He has become the Basil Fawlty of Europe.
What part of speech is Basil Fawlty?
Basil Fawlty is a noun.
What is the plural of Basil Fawlty?
The plural of Basil Fawlty is Basil Fawlty's.

Words near Basil Fawlty in the dictionary

  1. Basijis
  2. basikoside
  3. basikuloside
  4. basil
  5. basil balm
  6. Basil Fawlty
  7. basil thyme
  8. Basilan
  9. basilar
  10. basilar arteries
  11. basilar artery

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Basil Fawlty (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Basil Fawlty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/basil_fawlty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.