tailor-begotten

Updated: May 1, 2025

It is the same with the young man, though he would be more prone even than she to reject the suspicion of such tutorship. But he, too, will there learn either to speak the truth, or to lie; and will receive from his novel lessons either of real manliness, or of that affected apishness and tailor-begotten demeanor which too many professors of the craft give out as their dearest precepts."

Bayard Tuckerman - A History of English Prose Fiction