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Merry-andrew   Listen
noun
Merry-andrew  n.  One whose business is to make sport for others; a buffoon; a zany; especially, one who attends a mountebank or quack doctor. Note: This term is said to have originated from one Andrew Borde, an English physician of the 16th century, who gained patients by facetious speeches to the multitude.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Merry-andrew" Quotes from Famous Books



... long procession of vehicles which formed an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the Bastille to the Madeleine. Maskers abounded on the boulevard. In spite of the fact that it was raining at intervals, Merry-Andrew, Pantaloon and Clown persisted. In the good humor of that winter of 1833, Paris had disguised itself as Venice. Such Shrove Tuesdays are no longer to be seen now-a-days. Everything which exists being a scattered Carnival, there is no longer ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... threadbare fortunes, so that I cheerfully avail myself of her credulity. By God!" cried he, with a quick raising of the voice, "to-morrow I had been a landed gentleman but for you, you blundering omadhaun! And is a shabby merry-andrew from the devil knows where to pop in and spoil the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... and conditions. The tenth volume of the Extra Series of the Early English Text Society is wholly devoted to Borde, and well repays perusal, although probably few who read it will agree with Mr. Furnivall, the editor, that "any one who would make him more of a merry-andrew than anything else is a bigger fool than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... one vast puppet-show; and the noisy gaiety of the crowded streets almost stunned me. One of the first objects we encountered was a barouche full of Turks and Sultanas, driven by an old woman in a tawdry court dress as coachman; while a merry-andrew and a harlequin capered behind as footmen. Owing to the immense size of the city, and the difficulty of making our way through the motley throng of masks, beggars, lazzaroni, eating-stalls, carts and carriages, we were nearly ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson



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