puppyism

puppyism

English

Etymology

puppy +‎ -ism

Noun

puppyism (countable and uncountable, plural puppyisms)

1. Extreme meanness, affectation, conceit, or impudence.
   • Alexander Chalmers

     There is a puppyism in infidelity for which I have no patience.

   • 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility 33:

     Marianne was spared from the troublesome feelings of contempt and resentment, on this impertinent examination of their features, and on the puppyism of his manner in deciding on all the different horrors of the different toothpick-cases presented to his inspection, by remaining unconscious of it all; for she was as well able to collect her thoughts within herself, and be as ignorant of what was passing around her, in Mr. Gray's shop, as in her own bedroom.

2. Youthful folly.
   • 1836, Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers 35:

     Lounging near the doors, and in remote corners, were various knots of silly young men, displaying various varieties of puppyism and stupidity; amusing all sensible people near them with their folly and conceit; and happily thinking themselves the objects of general admiration--a wise and merciful dispensation which no good man will quarrel with.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for puppyism in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)