What is "dandy"

Dandy \Dan"dy\ (d[a^]n"d[y^]), n.; pl. Dandies (d[a^]n"d[i^]z). [Cf. F. dandin, ninny, silly fellow, dandiner to waddle, to play the fool; prob. allied to E. dandle. Senses 2 & 3 are of uncertain etymology.]

1. One who affects special finery or gives undue attention to dress; a fop; a coxcomb.

2. (Naut.)

   1. A sloop or cutter with a jigger on which a lugsail is set.

   2. A small sail carried at or near the stern of small boats; -- called also jigger, and mizzen.

3. A dandy roller. See below.

   Dandy brush, a yard whalebone brush.

   Dandy fever. See Dengue.

   Dandy line, a kind of fishing line to which are attached several crosspieces of whalebone which carry a hook at each end.

   Dandy roller, a roller sieve used in machines for making paper, to press out water from the pulp, and set the paper.

c.1780, of uncertain origin; it first appeared in a Scottish border ballad:I've heard my granny crack
O' sixty twa years back
When there were sic a stock of Dandies Oetc. In that region, Dandy is diminutive of Andrew (as it was in Middle English generally). The word was in vogue in London c.1813-1819. His female counterpart was a dandizette (1821) with French-type ending. The adjective dandy first recorded 1792; very popular c.1880-1900. Related: Dandified; dandify.

a. 1 Like a dandy, foppish. 2 Very good; better than expected but not as good as could be. 3 Almost first rate. n. 1 A man very concerned about his clothes and his appearance. 2 (context British nautical English) A yawl, or a small after-sail on a yawl. 3 A dandy roller.

1. adj. very good; "he did a bully job"; "a neat sports car"; "had a great time at the party"; "you look simply smashing" [syn: bang-up, bully, corking, cracking, great, groovy, keen, neat, nifty, not bad(p), peachy, slap-up, swell, smashing]

2. [also: dandiest, dandier]

1. n. a man who is much concerned with his dress and appearance [syn: dude, fop, gallant, sheik, beau, swell, fashion plate, clotheshorse]

2. [also: dandiest, dandier]

A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon his physical appearance.

Dandy may also refer to:

Dandy was the mascot of the New York Yankees between 1979 and 1981. He was a large pinstriped bird that sported a Yankees hat. He had a mustache that gave him an appearance similar to that of former Yankee catcher Thurman Munson. His name was a play on the classic American folk song " Yankee Doodle Dandy".

"Dandy" is a 1966 song from The Kinks, appearing on their Face to Face album.

Dandy (later Dandy Dungeon) is a dungeon crawl for the Atari 8-bit computers. Dandy is one of the first games to offer simultaneous, four-player, cooperative play. It also includes a built-in level editor. Dandy was the direct inspiration for the popular 1985 Atari Games coin-op, Gauntlet.

The Dandy EP by Herman's Hermits is the band's sixth EP and was released in the United Kingdom by EMI/Columbia ( catalogue number SEG 8520.)

Dandy is the surname of:

• James Edgar Dandy (1903–1976), British botanist
• Raymond Dandy (1887–1953), French actor
• John Garrick (1902-1966), British actor born Reginald Dandy
• Walter Dandy (1886–1946), American neurosurgeon

Dandy is a nickname which may refer to:

• Johnny Dolan (1849 or 1850–1876), New York City murderer and reputed gang leader
• Dandy Livingstone (born 1943), Jamaican reggae artist
• Alfred Lowth (1817–1907), English cricketer
• Jim "Dandy" Mangrum (born 1948), lead singer of the American Southern rock band Black Oak Arkansas
• George McLean (footballer born 1943), Scottish former footballer
• Johnny "Dandy" Rodriguez Jr (born 1945), American percussionist
• Dandy Sakano (born 1967), Japanese comedian

A dandy (also known as a beau or gallant) is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of self. A dandy was self-made and often strove to imitate an aristocratic lifestyle despite coming from a middle-class background, especially in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain.

Previous manifestations of the petit-maître (French for small master) and the Muscadin have been noted by John C. Prevost, but the modern practice of dandyism first appeared in the revolutionary 1790s, both in London and in Paris. The dandy cultivated skeptical reserve, yet to such extremes that novelist George Meredith, himself no dandy, once defined cynicism as "intellectual dandyism"; nevertheless, the Scarlet Pimpernel is one of the great dandies of literature. Some took a more benign view; Thomas Carlyle wrote in Sartor Resartus that a dandy was no more than "a clothes-wearing man". Honoré de Balzac introduced the perfectly worldly and unmoved Henri de Marsay in La fille aux yeux d'or (1835), a part of La Comédie Humaine, who fulfils at first the model of a perfect dandy, until an obsessive love-pursuit unravels him in passionate and murderous jealousy.

Charles Baudelaire defined the dandy, in the later "metaphysical" phase of dandyism, as one who elevates æsthetics to a living religion, that the dandy's mere existence reproaches the responsible citizen of the middle class: "Dandyism in certain respects comes close to spirituality and to stoicism" and "These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking .... Dandyism is a form of Romanticism. Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of mind."

The linkage of clothing with political protest had become a particularly English characteristic during the 18th century. Given these connotations, dandyism can be seen as a political protest against the levelling of egalitarian principles, often including nostalgic adherence to feudal or pre-industrial values, such as the ideals of "the perfect gentleman" or "the autonomous aristocrat". Paradoxically, the dandy required an audience, as Susann Schmid observed in examining the "successfully marketed lives" of Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron, who exemplify the dandy's roles in the public sphere, both as writers and as personae providing sources of gossip and scandal. Nigel Rodgers in The Dandy: Peacock or Enigma? questions Wilde's status as a genuine dandy, seeing him as someone who only assumed a dandified stance in passing, not a man dedicated to the exacting ideals of dandyism.