puckish

adjective

puck·ish ˈpə-kish

Synonyms of puckish next

: impish, whimsical

puckishly adverb

puckishness noun

Did you know?

We know Puck as "that merry wanderer of the night," the shape-changing, maiden-frightening, mischief-sowing henchman to the king of the fairies in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Bard drew on English folklore in casting his character, but the traditional Puck was more malicious than the Shakespearean imp; he was an evil spirit or demon. In medieval England, this nasty hobgoblin was known as the puke or pouke, names related to the Old Norse pūki, meaning "devil." (There is no connection to modern English puke.) But it was the Bard's characterization that stuck, and by the time the adjective puckish started appearing regularly in English texts in the 1800s the association was one of impishness, not evil.

Examples of puckish in a Sentence

He had a puckish smile on his face. he takes a puckish delight in teasing her about her love life, or lack thereof

Recent Examples on the Web

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

The results can be puckish, as when Elwood’s reflection appears in the chrome side of the iron that Hattie is sliding across an ironing board. —

Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 6 Dec. 2024 The director has a puckish quality about him, eager to cut a vulnerable statement with a wry observation or an ironic smile. —

Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 12 Sep. 2024 Grant, whose eager eyes and puckish smile wooed Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones and Julia Roberts’ Anna Scott (Notting Hill), uses his signature charm here to test the bounds of these junior missionaries’ beliefs. —

Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019 Far ahead of its time in its satirical targets and its mixing of disparate narrative tones, Turtle Island is a hilarious comic send-up that could only have emerged from Rozier’s puckish imagination. —

Samantha Bergeson, IndieWire, 15 July 2024 See all Example Sentences for puckish