verb
-
to behave flirtatiously
-
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
—Yes, yesterday, then they had been able to make plans, Maurits and she, how she should coquet with uncle, but to-day she had no thought of carrying them out.
From Invisible Links by Selma Lagerlöf
Just here Hazel entered and replenished the hearth, stopping half-way, with her armful of brush, to coquet an instant in the mirror, and adjust the scarlet love-knot in her curls.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 79, May, 1864 by Various
Love iz a lighted kandel, and coquets fly around it, just az a miller duz, till by-and-by they dive into it, and then what a burnt coquet and miller we hav.
From The Complete Works of Josh Billings by Henry W. Shaw
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 Alfred Rayney Waller
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
Youth, in its divinely suited garb of white, regarded itself with grave eyes for one breathless minute, flushed and coquetted with itself for another, and then was gone from the mirror.
From The Wishing Moon by Louise Elizabeth Dutton
It is wonderful how you have coquetted with every reason which may excuse our marriage except the only one that justifies it.”
From The Locusts' Years by Mary Helen Fee
The dance commenced with a slow gliding step, the dancers holding the ropes with one hand, while with the other the ladies coquetted their mantillas.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 355, May 1845 by Various
Pretty and intelligent, she coquetted with every one, and with me in particular; then, after some encouragement, she jilted me for a Bavarian lieutenant with rosy cheeks.
From Annouchka A Tale by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
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
Yes, by dividing cord wood into stove lengths, toying with the spade, coquetting with big bundles of grain.
From Revisiting the Earth by James Langdon Hill
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 Richard Jefferies
With Heine, too, who at that time was coquetting with Communism, he carried on a sprightly and not unfruitful intercourse.
From The life and teaching of Karl Marx by M. Beer
The conjurer twists first one, then two, butterflies out of a bit of white paper, and, by means of a fan, causes them to fly and poise as if they were coquetting with July breezes.
From From the Oak to the Olive A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey by Julia Ward Howe
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions 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.
