Definition of "nonpareil"

He informed the clerk that he would remain three or four days, inquired concerning the sailing of European steamships, and sank into the blissful inanition of the nonpareil hotel with the contented air of a traveller in his favorite inn.

1919, O. Henry, “Transients in Arcadia”, in The Voice of the City‎

A veritable artist, possessed of a deftness nonpareil with cotton swab and evacuation-hypo, the medical attaché is known among the shrinking upper classes of petro-Arab nations as the DeBakey of maxillofacial yeast […]

1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, page 33

[…] the series stars Samantha Morton as Margaret Wells, a London brothel owner; Ms. Brown Findlay as Charlotte, her older daughter and the city’s courtesan nonpareil; […]

2017 March 22, Kathryn Shattuck, “‘Harlots,’ on Hulu, Has Sex. But Settle Down, Guys.”, in The New York Times‎

My lord and master loves you. O, such love / Could be but recompens'd though you were crown'd / The nonpareil of beauty!

c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

King John of France, once prisoner in England, came […] to see the Countess of Salisbury, the nonpareil of those times, and his dear mistress.

1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, partition III, section 2, member 2, subsection ii

(a wren) crept or crawled, just like a true tree-creeper. I was, as I say, quite close, and watched it most attentively. It certainly—as far as good looking can settle it—did not assist itself with the wings. They remained close against the sides, or, if they moved at all, it was imperceptible to my eyes (which, by the way, are non-pareils).

1901, Edmund Selous, Bird Watching, p. 240

I believe that letters which are less than a millimetre and a half (1/17 inch) high, will finally prove injurious to the eye. How little attention has hitherto been paid to this important subject is exemplified in the fact that even oculistic journals and books frequently contain nonpareil, or letters only a millimetre (1/25 inch) high.

1881 May 19, Hermann Cohn, “Eyes and School-Books”, in Popular Science Monthly

A Handbook of Astronomy (cover, brown leather, detached, 5 plates, antique letterpress long primer, author’s footnotes nonpareil, marginal clues brevier, captions small pica).

1922 February, James Joyce, “”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […]