Word.ws English Dictionary

pierrot

/pɪəˈɹəʊ/

pierrot noun: any of various lycaenid butterflies of the genera Tarucus and Castalia, notable for white contrasting with brown or black on the underwings. Also the alternative form of Pierrot.

Noun

pierrot (plural pierrots)

  1. Any of various lycaenid butterflies of the genera Tarucus and Castalia, notable for white contrasting with brown or black on the underwings.
  2. (historical) An 18th-century women's low-cut basque with sleeves.

Proper noun capitalized: Pierrot

Pierrot (plural Pierrots)

  1. A character from French pantomime; a buffoon in a loose white outfit; a popular choice for a masquerade costume.
    • I'll win them by politeness, and... and... show them that I've nothing to do with that Aesop, that buffoon, that Pierrot, and have merely been taken in over this affair, just as they have.1912, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by Constance Garnett, The Brothers Karamazov, published 1880, Book II, chapter 8
    • And he was attending that fancy-dress ball, mark you--not, like every other well-bred Englishman, as a Pierrot, but as Mephistopheles […]
    • "He said that the costume of Pierrot, while pleasing to the eye, lacked the authority of the Mephistopheles costume."1934, P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

Also used as

pierrot is also the alternative form of Pierrot.

Forms of pierrot

Noun
pluralpierrots
Proper noun
pluralPierrots

Origin of pierrot

French Pierrot, diminutive of Pierre (“Peter”) via diminutive suffix -ot.

Words that rhyme with pierrot

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about pierrot

What does pierrot mean?
Pierrot means any of various lycaenid butterflies of the genera Tarucus and Castalia, notable for white contrasting with brown or black on the underwings.
What part of speech is pierrot?
Pierrot can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce pierrot?
Pierrot is pronounced /pɪəˈɹəʊ/.
What is the plural of pierrot?
The plural of pierrot is pierrots.

Words near pierrot in the dictionary

  1. Pierrepontians
  2. Pierrette
  3. Pierrettes
  4. Pierro
  5. Pierros
  6. pierrot
  7. pierrotage
  8. pierrotic
  9. pierrotite
  10. pierrots
  11. piers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pierrot (page history and authors); Pierrot (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: “pierrot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pierrot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.