euphuist

plural euphuists · alternative Euphuist

1. Someone who writes with euphuism.

plural Euphuists

1. Alternative letter-case form of euphuist.

   There he found the Euphuist in the same elegant posture of abstruse calculation which he had exhibited on the preceding evening, his arms folded in the same angle, his eyes turned up to the same cobwebs, and his heels resting on the ground as before.

   1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter II, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 64

   2 more examples

   The eloquence of the bar, the pulpit, and the council-board, was deformed by conceits which would have disgraced the rhyming shepherds of an Italian academy. The King quibbled on the throne. We might, indeed, console ourselves by reflecting that his Majesty was a fool. But the Chancellor quibbled in concert from the wool-sack: and the Chancellor was Francis Bacon. It is needless to mention [Philip] Sidney and the whole tribe of Euphuists. For [William] Shakspeare himself, the greatest poet that ever lived, falls into the same fault whenever he means to be particularly fine.

   1828 January, [Thomas Babington Macaulay], “Art[icle] I.—The Poetical Works of John Dryden. In 2 volumes. University Edition. London, 1826.”, in The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, volume XLVII, Edinburgh: […] Ballantyne & Co. for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, […] and Adam Black, […], →OCLC, pages 14–15

   For a time, Euphuism had it all its own way. Elizabeth was the most affected and detestable of Euphuists; and “that beauty in Court which could not parley Euphuism,” a courtier of Charles the First’s time tells us, “was as little regarded as she that now there speaks not French.”

   1874, J[ohn] R[ichard] Green, “The England of Elizabeth”, in A Short History of the English People. […], London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, chapter VII (The Reformation), page 392