drop names

Idioms & Phrases

drop names

Refer to important persons as acquaintances in order to impress the listener. For example, Her habit of dropping names made everyone very skeptical about her veracity. [Mid-1900s]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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Drop names is always a great word to know.

So is ninnyhammer. Does it mean:

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

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"The analogy between baseball fans and jazz fans is closer, it seems to me, than that between other audiences. The aficionados are aware of and concerned with the refinements of performance and the particular kinds of poetry in both solo and ensemble performances. (A beautifully executed double steal is as elegant as a Goodman arpeggio.) Like baseball fans, jazz fans know who played where and with whom and to what effect; they talk a rarefied language and drop the names of clarinetists and percussionists as baseball fans do the names of long-forgotten (except by them) shortstops and spitballers. Their retention of detail is prodigious."

-Russell Lynes

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