Fop became a pejorative term for a man excessively concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th-century England. Some of the many similar alternative terms are: coxcomb,[1] fribble, popinjay (meaning 'parrot'), dandy, fashion-monger, and ninny. Macaroni was another term of the 18th century more specifically concerned with fashion.
The pejorative term today carries the connotation of a person, usually male, who is overly concerned with trivial matters (especially matters of fashion) and who affects elite social standing. The term also appears in reference to deliberately camp styles based on eighteenth-century looks.
- ^ The Regency era dandy, Lord William Pitt Lennox, even described someone's public manner as "too coxcombical": Venetia Murray (1998) A Social History of the Regency 1788–1830.