An unusual word: for each of the two main senses of the word (of striking an attitude and of practising affected and self-conscious deportment) the OED cites only three examples. Interestingly, this word was “frequently” used–on three occasions–by Henry James (the last three examples below).
He had a great aversion to gesticulating in company. He called once to a gentleman who offended him in that point, ‘Don’t attitudenise.’ And when another gentleman thought he was giving additional force to what he uttered, by expressive movements of his hands, Johnson fairly seized them, and held them down.
Author and Text
Her profile, delicate and thin, defined itself against the sky, in the clear shadow of a coquettish hat; her figure was light; she bent and leaned easily; she wore a gray dress, fastened up as was then the fashion, and displaying the broad edge of a crimson petticoat. She kept her position; she seemed absorbed in the view. “Is she posing–is she attitudinizing for my benefit?” Longueville asked of himself. And then it seemed to him that this was a needless assumption, for the prospect was quite beautiful enough to be looked at for itself, and there was nothing impossible in a pretty girl having a love of fine landscape.
Author and Text
With the things she had heard him say about his convictions and theories, his view of life and the great questions of the future, she should have thought he would find Miss Tarrant’s attitudinising absolutely nauseous. Were not her views the same as Olive’s and hadn’t Olive and he signally failed to hit it off together? Mrs. Luna only asked because she was really quite puzzled. “Don’t you know that some minds, when they see a mystery, can’t rest till they clear it up?”
Author and Texts
In dining two evenings before with her brother and with the Dormers Mrs. Dallow had been moved to exclaim that Peter and Nick knew the most extraordinary people. As regards Peter the attitudinising girl and her mother now pointed that moral with sufficient vividness; so that there was little arrogance in taking a similar quality for granted of the conceited man at her elbow, who sat there as if he might be capable from one moment to another of leaning over the arm of her sofa. She had not the slightest wish to talk with him about himself, and was afraid for an instant that he was on the point of passing from the chapter of his cleverness to that of his timidity. It was a false alarm, however, for he only animadverted on the pleasures of the elegant extract hurled–literally hurlé in general–from the centre of the room at one’s defenceless head.
Author and Texts