verb
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to behave flirtatiously
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to dally or trifle
Etymology
Origin of coquet
1685–95; < French; literally, cockerel, equivalent to coq cock + -et -et
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.
See Examples For:
A: I'm afraid I was a bit of a coquet in my youth, but now that I'm a grandmother with an 18-year-old granddaughter, I'm simplifying what I wear.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 1, 2010
"The second is richer, but your choice c'est plus coquet."
From White Nights and Other Stories The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
The coquet is sadly tempted to gather some of the flowers for her own use, but dares not.
From A Treatise on the Art of Dancing by Gallini, Giovanni-Andrea
His wings moved so slowly he seemed to fly without pressure on the air—as slowly as a lady fans herself when there is no one to coquet with.
From Bevis The Story of a Boy by Jefferies, Richard
His Letters shew him to have lived in a continual fever of petty vanity, and to have been a finished literary coquet.
From Lectures on the English Poets Delivered at the Surrey Institution by Waller, Alfred Rayney
Madame coquetted with him in the most captivating and naive manner, with eyes, gestures, and a profusion of compliments, till the Colonel’s old head felt thirty years younger on his padded shoulders.
From "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin
Away to the westward irregular fragments of thundercloud, which seemed incapable of cohering sufficiently to produce a storm, coquetted with the quivering mountain-tops.
From By Veldt and Kopje by Scully, W. C. (William Charles)
They doubtless still coquetted with a certain sentimentality, but it seemed to me that with true sorrow true feeling had also vanished.
From A Twofold Life by Hillern, Wilhelmine von
She coquetted with me, discarded me, and wedded my kinsman.
From Trevethlan: Volume 1 A Cornish Story. by Watson, William Davy
He had 323 passed all his years in school, fed, clad, thought for, commanded; and had grown familiar and coquetted with the fear of punishment.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) by Stevenson, Robert Louis
The ostler watched her pick her way towards her master, coquetting with her head, and sidling round him in the most playful manner possible.
From The Black Moth A Romance of the XVIIIth Century by Heyer, Georgette
The goldfinches swept by overhead with a gleam of colour from their wings, coquetting on their way to the apple-trees.
From Greene Ferne Farm by Jefferies, Richard
But Heine is to our view always the same, always the representative of humor with "a laughing tear" in his escutcheon, always the poetic anomaly, coquetting with his pain and scoffing it away.
From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 16 by Various
More than the five o'clock tea affectation was to come of the new coquetting with English fashions.
From Our Philadelphia by Pennell, Elizabeth Robins
It appears in the tender and so infinitely sad lines which he wrote in prison, and likewise in the Confessions, a vain, exaggeratedly candid and coquetting portrait in prose.
From Paul Verlaine by Zweig, Stefan
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.
