peacockery

peacockery

English

Etymology

peacock +‎ -ery

Noun

peacockery (usually uncountable, plural peacockeries)

1. gaudy showiness; ostentation
   • 1880, Walter Besant and James Rice, The Seamy Side, London: Chatto & Windus, 1888, Chapter XXIV, p. 280,

     […] he was so deeply struck with the shock of this revelation that he actually forgot himself and his own peacockery.

   • 1946, "The New Elegance," Time, 11 November, 1946,

     Designs ranged from elaborate peacockery to sexy sheaths of black sequins, to puffs of lace topped with sparkling rhinestones.

   • 1998, Des Kennedy, An Ecology of Enchantment, p. 64,

     Shoots break from the earth, leaves unfurl auspiciously and peacockeries of colour—dashing golds, purples and whites—illuminate the grounds.

   • 2002, Jim Harrison and Robert J. DeMott, Conversations with Jim Harrison, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, p. 75,

     I have always thought of the word “macho” in terms of what it means in Mexico—a particularly ugly peacockery, a conspicuous cruelty to women and animals and children, a gratuitous viciousness.