petit maître
petit maître noun: a fop or dandy.
Noun
petit maître (plural petits maîtres)
- A fop or dandy.
- The unfortunate petit maitre, driven to the extremity of his condescension, acknowledged it to be a masterly refinement […].1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- macaroni, popinjay, barbermonger, beau, blade, blood, buck, carpet knight, cockscomb, dandy
- A lesser master of something, especially of some artistic skill; a minor talent.
- Monstrous critical overkill of an even more up-market kind has transformed the Argentinian petit maître, Borges, into one of the Great Writers of our Time and his most recent collection, The Book of Sand […] shows signs that he is content humbly to acquiesce in this opinion.1979, Angela Carter, “Latin Rhythms”, in Shaking a Leg, Vintage, published 2013, page 563
- The point of this survey is to present Calder as a giant of modernism instead of a petit-maître of whimsical toys.2015 November 15, Laura Cumming, The Guardian
Synonyms of petit maître
- macaroni
- popinjay
- carpet knight
- dandy
- dood
- fashionable
- fast man
- fine gentleman
- fop
- fribble
28 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of petit maître
| plural | petits maîtres |
|---|
Origin of petit maître
From French petit-maître.
Questions about petit maître
- What does petit maître mean?
- Petit maître means a fop or dandy.
- What part of speech is petit maître?
- Petit maître is a noun.
- What is the plural of petit maître?
- The plural of petit maître is petits maîtres.
Words near petit maître in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: petit maître (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:
Cite this entry: “petit maître.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/petit_ma%C3%AEtre. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.