coquette

coquette

English

WOTD – 29 October 2015

Etymology

Borrowed from French coquette.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kɒˈkɛt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /koʊˈkɛt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

Noun

coquette (plural coquettes)

1. A woman who flirts or plays with men's affections.
   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 11, in On the Road, Viking Press, OCLC 43419454, part 3:

     She was a big, sexy brunette—as Garcia said, «Something straight out of Degas,» and generally like a beautiful Parisian coquette.

   • 1997, Ian McEwan, Enduring Love, Vintage (1998), page 141:

     I was playing with him, leading him on, sending him messages of encouragement then turning away from him. I was a tease, a coquette.

2. Any hummingbird in the genus Lophornis

Derived terms

• coquetry
• coquettish
• coquettishly
• coquettishness
• spangled coquette

Translations

flirtatious woman

Armenian: կոկետուհի (hy) (koketuhi), պչրուհի (hy) (pčʿruhi) Bulgarian: коке́тка (bg) (kokétka) Chinese: Mandarin: 風騷女子／风骚女子 (fēngsāo nǚzǐ), 狐狸精 (zh) (húlijīng) Czech: koketa Finnish: hempukka (fi), keimailija (fi), koketti (fi) French: allumeuse (fr) f, coquette (fr) f German: Kokette f, Schäkerin f Japanese: 男誑し (おとこたらし, otokotarashi), コケット (koketto) Kalmyk: һалдһлзсн (ğaldğlzsn) Korean: 요부 (yobu) Maori: hinehine Portuguese: coquete (pt) f Russian: коке́тка (ru) f (kokétka), вертихво́стка (ru) f (vertixvóstka) (disapprovingly) Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: кокета f Roman: koketa (sh) f Swedish: kokett (sv) c Turkish: yosma (tr), oynak (tr)

Verb

coquette (third-person singular simple present coquettes, present participle coquetting, simple past and past participle coquetted)

1. Alternative form of coquet
   • 1875, Herbert Eastwick Compton, Semi-tropical trifles:

     Nobber has no small opinion of himself: he considers himself the Adonis of the Pondaati eleven, and he contemplates society as though it were Venus, and it was his mission to posturize before it, and coquette and toy with it.

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French

Etymology

From coquet.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɔ.kɛt/

Adjective

coquette

1. feminine singular of coquet

Noun

coquette f (plural coquettes)

1. flirt, tease

   Elle est une vraie coquette.

   She's such a flirt.

Descendants

• → Dutch: koket
• → English: coquette
• Esperanto: koketa
• → Portuguese: coquete
• → Serbo-Croatian: koketa
• → Spanish: coqueto

Further reading

• “coquette”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.