Bilboesque

English

Etymology

From Bilbo +‎ -esque.

Adjective

Bilboesque (comparative more Bilboesque, superlative most Bilboesque)

1. (rare) Reminiscent of Theodore G. Bilbo’s racist sentiment.
   • 1994, John Egerton, Speak Now Against The Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South‎^[1], Knopf, →ISBN:

     Mississippi voters gave Bilboesque Senator James O. Eastland a resounding vote of confidence; […]

   • 2008, Chris Myers Asch, The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer, University of North Carolina Press (2011), →ISBN, page 329 (endnote):

     […] writing in 1968, Robert Sherrill commented upon this apparent contradiction between Eastland's public image as a Bilboesque demagogue and his private geniality: […]

   • 2011, Reuel Schiller, “Singing 'The Right-to-Work Blues': The Politics of Race in the Campaign for 'Voluntary Unionism' in Postwar California”, in Nelson Lichtenstein, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, editors, The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination, University of Pennsylvania Press, published 2012, →ISBN, page 156:

     It touches every possible nerve of a progressive Californian, whether black or white, by linking the right-to-work movement to the worst excesses of southern extremism: absurd, Bilboesque miscegenation fears; […]

2. Of, relating to, or reminiscent of the character Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
   • 1981, Katharyn W. Crabbe, J. R. R. Tolkien, Frederick Ungar Publishers, →ISBN, page 60:

     At the same time, Bilboesque proverbs like "Every worm has his weak spot" and "Never laugh at live dragons" use the familiar proverb form to make the unfamiliar inhabitants of the secondary world seem more matter-of-fact.

   • 2010 October 29, Toby Manhire, “The Hobbit hullabaloo”, in The Guardian:

     So here goes: much as Alex Ferguson and Manchester United could not afford to let their Bilboesque, talismanic striker leave the football club, Key and New Zealand could not afford to let this production take flight.

   • 2011 August 23, Geoff Boucher, “‘The Hobbit’: Peter Jackson and the one true Bilbo Baggins”, in Los Angeles Times:

     “He’s Bilbo-esque,” the filmmaker said. “You might not always want to say that about you, right? But seriously he has the essential features of this little English gent, this country gent who is slightly old-fashioned and has to go around in the world and try to cope with it. That’s not exactly who Martin [Freeman] is as a person, but as an actor he does that so well. […]

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Bilboesque.