An impertinent, vulgar prig. (See Jeannot.)
More likely, it is Jack and ape, formed on the model of Jack-ass, a stupid fool.
“I will teach a scurvy jackanape priest to meddle or make.”—Shakespeare: Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 4.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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