merry-andrew

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“Persons who naïvely mistake me for a merry-andrew with an inflated pig’s bladder can never understand that I adore whichever tradition I am striving to follow,” he said in a 1980 interview.

From The New Yorker • Jul. 30, 2014

In one part of the street there was a puppet-show with a ridiculous merry-andrew, who kept both grown people and children in a roar of laughter.

From Biographical Stories (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") by Hawthorne, Nathaniel

This last mentioned person had been bred with an apothecary, and sometimes travelled the country in the high capacity of a quack doctor, at others, in the more humble station of a merry-andrew.

From Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences by Hayward, Arthur L.

Cousin Thompson—the ex-grocer of Haggart's Cross—considered swallow-tails and white chokers to be fanciful nonsense: he would not make a merry-andrew of himself to please anybody.

From Mrs. Thompson A Novel by Maxwell, W. B. (William Babington)

For myself, I jumped and danced about like a merry-andrew, and I found, or fancied I found, myself already a convalescent.

From Memoirs of the Extraordinary Military Career of John Shipp Late a Lieut. in His Majesty's 87th Regiment by Shipp, John