Mais non pas d’un pareil trésor,
Que cette souveraine gomme.
Parnasse des Muses.
Gommeuse, f. (familiar), showily dressed girl or woman, a “dasher.”
[Gommeux], adj. and m. (familiar), pretty; dandy.
C’était elle qui, pour la première fois, recevant un de ses amants astiqué des pieds à la tête, empesé, ciré, frotté, tiré, semblant, en deux mots, trempé dans de la gomme arabique en dissolution, avait dit de lui: un gommeux! Le petit-crevé avait un successeur.—E. Monteil, Cornebois.
The different appellations corresponding to various periods are as follows:—Under Louis XIV., “mouchar, muguet, petit-maître, talon-rouge.” After the revolution of 1793, “muscadin.” Under the government of the Directoire from ’95 to ’99, “incroyable, merveilleux.” Then from the Restoration come in succession, “mirliflor, élégant, dandy, lion, fashionable, and gandin.” Under the Third Empire, “cocodès, crevé, petit-crevé, col-cassé.” From 1870 to the present day, “gommeux, luisant, poisseux, boudiné, pschutteux, exhumé, gratiné, faucheur, and finally bécarre.” The English have the terms “swell, gorger, masher,” and the old expression “flasher,” mentioned in the following quotation from the English Supplementary Glossary:—
They are reckoned the flashers of the place, yet everybody laughs at them for their airs, affectations, and tonish graces and impertinences.—Madame d’Arblay, Diary.
The Spectator termed a dandy a “Jack-pudding,” and Goldsmith calls him a “macaroni,” “The Italians,” he says, “are extremely fond of a dish they call macaroni, ... and as they consider this as the summum bonum of all good eating, so they figuratively call everything they think elegant and uncommon macaroni. Our young travellers, who generally catch the follies of the countries they visit, judged that the title of macaroni was very applicable to a clever fellow; and accordingly, to distinguish themselves as such, they instituted a club under this denomination, the members of which were supposed to be the standards of taste. The infection at St. James’s was soon caught in the City, and we have now macaronies of every denomination, from the Colonel of the Train’d-Bands down to the printer’s devil or errand-boy. They indeed make a most ridiculous figure, with hats of an inch in the brim, that do not cover, but lie upon the head; with about two pounds of fictitious hair, formed into what is called a club, hanging down their shoulders, as white as a baker’s sack; the end of the skirt of their coat reaching not down to the first button of their breeches.... Such a figure, essenced and perfumed, with a bunch of lace sticking out under its chin, puzzles the common passenger to determine the thing’s sex; and many have said, by your leave, madam, without intending to give offence.”
The Americans give the name of “dude” to one who apes the manners of swells. It may be this word originated from a comparison between the tight and light-coloured trousers sported by swells, and the stem of a pipe termed “dudeen” by the Irish. Compare the French expression “boudiné,” literally sausage-like, for a swell in tight clothing.