'A Man Fond of Show, Dress, and Flutter'

Foppery and fop seem exclusively English words, at least as un-American as chap. In fact, a native-born American who uses chap is probably guilty of foppery. Though I’ve often witnessed their objects in life, I’ve never used these words in writing or speech. Foppery has frequent applications, especially among pop musicians, actors, some politicians and most academics in the humanities. No other word will quite do when we encounter a conceited, sometimes dandified twit utterly oblivious to his vanity. It just showed up in Swift’s longest poem, “Cadenus and Vanessa” (1713):

“In a dull stream, which moving slow,

You hardly see the current flow;

If a small breeze obstruct the course,

It whirls about, for want of force,

And in its, narrow circle gathers

Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers.

The current of a female mind

Stops thus, and turns with every wind;

Thus whirling round together draws

Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws.”

⁠A French import, fop entered English in the fifteenth century, originally as “a foolish person, a fool,” according to the OED. It morphed into “a conceited person, a pretender to wit, wisdom, or accomplishments; a coxcomb, ‘prig,’” before settling on the modern sense: “one who is foolishly attentive to and vain of his appearance, dress, or manners; a dandy, an exquisite.” Let’s be clear: all of us to some degree are vain. We would rather be judged handsome and intelligent than not, but some of us try not to make a career of it. Foppishness is conceit turned ideological. The definition of fop given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary is definitive:

“A simpleton; a coxcomb [another word badly in need of resuscitation]; a man of small understanding and much ostentation; a pretender; a man fond of show, dress, and flutter [and another]; an impertinent.”

The most memorable and still pertinent use of foppery comes in Act I, Scene 2 of King Lear, when Edmund replies to Gloucester:

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.”