subs. (colloquial).—(1) A person curious, or professing, to know everything. [Latin = ‘What now?’] Hence (2) a politician. [Popularised by a character in Murphy’s Upholsterer (1758).]
1709. STEELE, Tatler, No. 10. ‘The insignificancy of my manners to the rest of the world, makes the laughers call me a QUIDNUNC, a phrase which I neither understand, nor shall never enquire what they mean by it.’
1729. POPE, The Dunciad, i. 270.
| This the great mother dearer held than all | |
| The clubs of QUIDNUNCS, or her own Guildhall. |
1818. T. MOORE, The Fudge Family in Paris, pt. 81.
| Or QUIDNUNCS, on Sunday, just fresh from the barber’s, | |
| Enjoying their news. |
1886. Athenæum, 6 Nov. 595, 1. What the masses believed … and what the QUIDNUNCS of London repeated, may here be found.
