Find the word definition

Crossword clues for sobriquet

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
sobriquet
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Fortunately some of the neighbours intervened, and it was they who invented the sobriquet.
▪ His youngest son was known to Regency society by the sobriquet Poodle Byng.
▪ I became friendly with the woman in charge, a vast and haughty person who answered to the sobriquet Duchesse.
▪ This sobriquet is a product of the sixteenth century.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sobriquet

Sobriquet \So`bri`quet"\ (s[-o]`br[-e]`k[asl]"), n.[F. sobriquet, OF. soubzbriquet, soubriquet, a chuck under the chin, hence, an affront, a nickname; of uncertain origin; cf. It. sottobecco a chuck under the chin.] An assumed name; a fanciful epithet or appellation; a nickname. [Sometimes less correctly written soubriquet.]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
sobriquet

1640s, from French sobriquet "nickname," from Middle French soubriquet (15c.), which also meant "a jest, quip," and is said to have meant literally "a chuck under the chin" [Gamillscheg]; of unknown origin (first element perhaps from Latin sub "under").

Wiktionary
sobriquet

n. A familiar name for a person (typically a shortened version of a person’s given name).

WordNet
sobriquet

n. a familiar name for a person (often a shortened version of a person's given name); "Joe's mother would not use his nickname and always called him Joseph"; "Henry's nickname was Slim" [syn: nickname, moniker, cognomen, soubriquet]

Wikipedia
Sobriquet

A sobriquet is a nickname, sometimes assumed, but often given by another. Distinct from a pseudonym that is assumed as a disguise, it usually is a familiar name, familiar enough such that it may be used in place of a real name without the need of explanation. This salient characteristic is of sufficient familiarity that the sobriquet may become more familiar than the original name.

Examples are Genghis Khan, who now is rarely recognized by his original name, Temüjin; and Mohandas Gandhi, who is better known as Mahatma Gandhi. Well-known places often have sobriquets, such as New York City, often referred to as the Big Apple. Therefore, sobriquet may apply to the nickname for a specific person, group of people, or place.

Usage examples of "sobriquet".

The name Code Master was an embarrassing sobriquet Babby had announced to one and all after his success at breaking the French code during the war.

Scunthorpe, and, with the praiseworthy notion of introducing Bertram into better company, made him known to one of the most disinterested of her admirers, young Lord Wivenhoe, heir to an affluent Earldom, and known to the greater part of London as Chuffy Wivenhoe, an affectionate sobriquet earned for him by his round, good-humoured countenance.

It was therefore truly astonishing that his name was Titty Smart, though it may be supposed that this was a sobriquet and not his Christian name.

Both here and in Germany this Goosefoot is used for feeding poultry, and it has hence acquired the sobriquet of Fat-hen.

Pomeroy was a journalist, whose sobriquet resulted from a series of Brickdust Sketches of prominent Wisconsin men which he published in one of his papers.

The legless Quebecker Wheelchair Assassins, although legless and confined to wheelchairs, nevertheless contrive to have situated large reflective devices across odd-numbered United States highways for the purpose of disorienting and endangering northbound Americans, to have disrupted pipelines between processing points in the eastern Reconfiguration's annular fusion grid, have been linked to attempts at systemic damage of the federally contracted Empire Waste Displacement's launch and reception facilities on both sides of the Reconfigured intracontinental border, and, perhaps most infamously, derive their cell's own sobriquet in the vox populi "Wheelchair Assassins" from the active practice of assassinating prominent Cana dian officials who support or even tolerate what they the A.

The Iraqis sent a delegation led by 'Izzat Ibrahim ad-Duri, one of Saddam's longtime Ba'thist flunkies, and accompanied by none other than 'All Hassan al-Majid, whose treatment of the Kurds had earned him the sobriquet "Chemical 'Ali.

It informs the reader that the object of the sobriquet is presumptively insane by saying he is a member of it.

Educated men were reluctant to use their family and personal names and addressed each other by their sobriquets instead.

Nicknames differ from sobriquets, which we select ourselves and for which we pick the most flattering combinations.

But the night was short and every moment precious because of their desire to make love, so he never did ask the women's names, their husbands' sobriquets, or where they lived.

He recalled the Knave's telling him about two sisters from a rich and distinguished family who were married to two brothers, and the brothers' sobriquets happened to match these.