bijou
adjEtymology Borrowed from Sabir bijou, ultimately from Occitan pichon (“small, little”), influenced by English bijou (“jewel”).
1
Polari Small; little.
- You may have vada'd one of our tiny bijou masterpiecettes, heartface.1968, Kenneth Horne, Bona Prods (Round the Horne):
- We, the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence and the Gathered Faithful, do hereby invoke the spirit of our beloved Muffin the Mule, to recognize the bona work of Mr. Derek Jarman in promulgating Universal Joy […] in his bijou masterpiecettes[.]1997, Ian Lucas, “The Color of His Eyes: Polari and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”, in Anna Livia, Kira Hall, editors, Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, page 91:
1 more example
- Polari, used for decades by gay men, actors, and theatre performers and which famously appeared on primetime radio show Round The Horne, has been brought up-to-date with a bijou iPhone appette.2012 August 5, Paul, “Bijou Polari Appette pre-varda’d”, in Gay History, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2012:
2
Of a residence Small and elegant.
- I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb lock to the door. Large sitting-room on the right side, well furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those preposterous English window fasteners which a child could open.1891, A Scandal in Bohemia:
- In small towns like Soldau a small area accommodates the town hall, the church, several miniature squares, a monument to somebody or other, perhaps more than one, all sorts of shops, beerhouses, a post office, a bank, and there may be a bijou park behind wrought-iron railings, then the streets and the town end just as abruptly, and you have scarcely passed the last house when you find a highroad lined with trees stretching before you with a neat grid of precisely demarcated fields on either side.1989 [1971], Willetts, H. T., transl., August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, translation of Август 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, →ISBN, page 126:
3
Intricate; finely made.
- Derived terms
- bijou problemette