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Merry Andrew

noun

Etymology

Originally associated with a specific act at Bartholomew Fair; later said to have come from the name of Andrew Boorde.

Definitions

  1. A person who clowns publicly

    A person who clowns publicly; a buffoon; an entertainer's assistant.

    • Instead, therefore, of answering my landlady, the puppet-show man ran out to punish his Merry-Andrew [...]
    • The games of the circus—the wild-beast fight and the gladiators, the rope-dancers, the merry-andrews, and the posture-masters,—were more to their taste than clever intrigue and brilliant dialogue.
    • One of them, the eldest, was a sort of merry andrew and was not above dressing the part with a weird cap of jackal's skin with many hanging tails and tassels.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for Merry Andrew. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA