nincompoopianan.
/ˌnɪŋkəmpuːpɪˈɑːnə/, U.S. /ˌnɪnkəmˌpupiˈɑnə/, /ˌnɪŋkəmˌpupiˈɑnə/ derogatory. Now historical.
(A name for) the late 19th-cent. aesthetic movement (see aesthetic adj. 3); (more generally) the vogue for aestheticism which accompanied it. Cf. decadent adj. 2b.Chiefly used as a satirical attack on the affected dandyism of the writers, etc., associated with the movement.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > aesthetics > [noun] > aestheticism > cult of
nincompoopiana1879
1879 Punch 14 June (heading of cartoon caption) Nincompoopiana.
1880 Art Amateur Aug. 55/1 The little coterie of strivers after the excruciating..who come the nearest, it is to be hoped, of anything in America to the ‘Nincompoopiana’ so wholesomely ridiculed by Du Maurier in Punch.
1895 M. Beerbohm in Yellow Bk. Jan. 279 Long before this time there had been in the heart of Chelsea a kind of cult of Beauty... ‘Nincompoopiana’ the craze was called at first, and later ‘Æstheticism’.
1937 H. H. Hoeltje Palimpsest June (title) Nincompoopiana [Oscar Wilde in Iowa].
1970 Sunday Times 18 Oct. 49/3 ‘Nincompoopiana’ began in the 1880s and was triggered off by the aesthetic movement which rebelled against the pretty and the respectable, and by the ‘new woman’.
1994 New Republic (Nexis) 16 May 38 Another cartoon, called ‘Nincompoopiana’, shows a group of aesthetes arranged in limp poses.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1879