Pique-devant
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A small beard trimmed to a sharp point. historical, obsolete
"Neither will I meddle with our varietie of beards, of which some are shauen from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of marques Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, other with a pique de vant (O fine fashion!) or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being growen to be so cunning in this behalfe as the tailors."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Neither will I meddle with our varietie of beards, of which some are shauen from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of marques Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, other with a pique de vant (O fine fashion!) or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being growen to be so cunning in this behalfe as the tailors."
Etymology
Probably coined in England, from French pique (“pike, spade (cards)”) or piquer (“to prick”) + devant (“in front”)
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.