quidnunc
Americannoun
noun
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Etymology
Origin of quidnunc
First recorded in 1700–10, quidnunc is from Latin quid nunc “what now?”
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.
“Quid pro quo” can be found under “Q” in the dictionary proper, between “quidnunc” and “quids in.”
From The New Yorker
It was then sold in convenient pennyworths;—hence coffee-houses where wits, quidnuncs, and idlers resorted, were called “penny universities.”
From Project Gutenberg
We have not now to haggle with the quidnuncs over the less or more of Art permissible in a garden, but to fight out the question whether civilisation shall have any garden at all.
From Project Gutenberg
London had been bewildered, and its literary quidnuncs utterly puzzled, when such a story first came forth inscribed with an unknown name.
From Project Gutenberg
Alas! capricious fate that governs these things turned my sweet, unconscious Ellen to one forever on the alert for the appearance of this long-legged quidnunc.
From Project Gutenberg
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
