Word.ws English Dictionary

dapper

/ˈdæpə/US/ˈdæpəɹ/

dapper adjective: neat, trim.

Adjective

dapper (comparative dapperer, superlative dapperest)

  1. Neat, trim.
    • This entrance is through a little courtyard, in which is the stable and coach-house combined, where Madame Perinere, a lady who paints the magic word "Modes" beneath her name on the door-post of number seventeen, keeps the dapper little cart and pony which carry her bonnets to the farthest corner...1892, Henry Seton Merriman, The Slave Of The Lamp
  2. Stylishly dressed, neatly dressed, spiffy.
    • “It is too bad that monsieur has been troubled,” said Tarzan, turning to the newspaper man. “I bid monsieur good evening,” and he bowed the dapper young man out of the room, and closed the door in his face.1913 June–December, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Plot That Failed”, in The Return of Tarzan, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, […], published March 1915, →OCLC, page 71
    • Going down the street, you would meet a typical commercial traveller, dapper and alert.1917, P. G. Wodehouse, The Man With Two Left Feet
  3. Quick; little and active.

Noun

dapper (plural dappers)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A plimsoll.
    Synonyms:
    dap

dapper meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

dapper in Urdu

زندہ دل

dapper in Bengali

পরিপাটি, কেতাদুরস্ত

dapper in Malayalam

smart, spruce, trim
വൃത്തിയും ചെെതന്യവുമുള്ള, വെടിപ്പുള്ള, സുവേഷനായ, നല്ലപെരുമാറ്റരീതിയുള്ള, നല്ലവേഷം ധരിച്ച, ലാളിത്യവും സൗകുമാര്യവുമുള്ള

dapper in Kannada

ಸೂಟಿ, ಚುರುಕು, ಚೊಕ್ಕಟ

Examples of dapper in a sentence

  • Tall, dapper, brown-mopped Will was the closest thing I had to a brother.
  • Dapper Harlem realtist, Paul Jones, took the wedding vows with Baltimore teacher Bernice Soles.
  • A real candidate arose to challenge dapper Robert Rice ("Buncombe Bob") Reynolds, aging coxcomb of the Senate.

All 12 example sentences with dapper

Synonyms of dapper

Forms of dapper

Adjective
comparativedapperer
superlativedapperest
Noun
pluraldappers

Origin of dapper

From Middle English daper (“pretty, neat”), from Middle Dutch dapper (“stalwart, nimble”), Old Dutch *dapar, from Proto-Germanic *dapraz (“stout; solid; heavy; bold”) (compare German tapfer "bold", Norwegian daper "saddened, dreary"), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeb- ‘thick, heavy’ (compare Tocharian A tpär ‘high’, Latvian dàbls ‘strong’, Serbo-Croatian дебео (dèbeo) ‘fat’).

Words formed from dapper

Phrases with dapper

Words that rhyme with dapper

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dapper

What does dapper mean?
Dapper means neat, trim.
What is dapper in Urdu?
Dapper in Urdu is زندہ دل. See Dapper meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is dapper?
Dapper can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce dapper?
Dapper is pronounced /ˈdæpə/ (UK).

Words near dapper in the dictionary

  1. DApp
  2. dappa
  3. dappas
  4. dapped
  5. dapped up
  6. dapper
  7. Dapper Dan
  8. Dapper Dans
  9. dappered up
  10. dapperer
  11. dapperest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dapper (page history and authors); dapper (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Dapper (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dapper (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); dapper (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dapper.wav.

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