Also 7–8 tartuff. [F. Tartufe, Tartuffe, name of the principal character (a religious hypocrite) in a comedy by Molière (1664): app. = OF. tartuffe, It. tartuffo truffle, as a concealed production.
Littré cites It. Tartufo, name of a character in the Malmantile of Lippi, as app. Molière’s source.]
A hypocritical pretender to religion, or, by extension, to excellence of any kind.
1688. Pulpit Popery, True Popery, 72. Well, let Schoolmen and Cardinals … be call’d in, they are but Tartuffs; for Exposition and Representation are now the Standard of Romish Doctrine.
1738. Warburton, Div. Legat., I. Ded. 24. Tartufes without Religion.
1765. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, VIII. ii. The arrantest Tartuffe in science, in politics,—or in religion.
1838. Eclectic Rev., III. (N.S.), Jan., 79. The work now before us is a satirical novel; having for its main design, to show up the evangelical clergy in the person of the Vicar of Wrexhill, a Tartuffe in English costume.
1878. J. Payn, By Proxy, I. xii. 138. A touch of the Tartuffe or the Joseph Surface.
Hence Tartufferie, -ery [F. tartuferie]. Tartuf(f)ism, the character or conduct of a Tartuffe, hypocrisy; Tartuffian, Tartuf(f)ish adjs., pertaining to or characteristic of a Tartuffe, hypocritical, pretentious; hence Tartuffishly adv.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., III. IV. iv. 182. Out upon you, Priests of Beelzebub and Moloch; of *Tartuffery, Mammon, and the Prussian Gallows,—which ye name Mother Church and God!
1851. Fraser’s Mag., XLIII. 15. Her national Tartuffery augmented and became more offensive.
1906. Sat. Rev., 13 Oct., 450/1. That incorrigible. ‘Tartufferie’ which marks all our conquests.
1764. J. Langhorne, Lett. Theodosius & Constantia (ed. 2), vii. 58. The wild reveries of *Tartuffian dreamers.
1872. Routledge’s Ev. Boy’s Ann., 672. In such a very Tartuffian way.
1768. Sterne, Sent. Journ. (1778), I. 66. God help her!… she has some mother-in-law, or *tartufish aunt … to consult upon the occasion.
1824. Examiner, 594/1. That Alliance so *tartuffishly termed ‘holy.’
1688. Pulpit Popery, True Popery, 72. The *Tartuffism of Deposition of Princes, and Adoration of Images, and the rest of the once old and new Pulpit-Popery.
1891. Sat. Rev., 10 Oct., 403/1. The victim of Tartufism of the most disgusting kind.
