noun

• A writer, musician, artist, or other public figure who is greatly admired by a relatively small audience or is influential despite limited commercial success.

  ‘at the time he was pretty much a cult figure, known only to a handful of art-movie buffs’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The undoubted cult figure of Pop Art was Andy Warhol (1928-1987).’
  • ‘Signer is an artist's artist par excellence, and he has long been a kind of cult figure.’
  • ‘Kurt's status as a cult figure guarantees a certain uncritical readership, and who wants to mess with that?’
  • ‘He was thus something of a cult figure to an extent that was unusual in one who rarely lectured and who would surely have been rather difficult to manage at book signings.’
  • ‘His eccentric, diffident personality helped to promote him quickly to the status of a cult figure.’
  • ‘At best a cult figure in his lifetime in the United States, he was adopted as one of the patron saints of the French New Wave.’
  • ‘He is revered all over Europe as probably the world's leading classic choreographer, yet is little more than a cult figure in the United States.’
  • ‘It said the BBC commentator had become a cult figure because of his "dry comments and lack of restraint".’
  • ‘Not surprisingly, many Australian winemakers have become cult figures on the international scene and often celebrities at home.’
  • ‘This perceived eccentricity is an important part of Gould's identity and is no doubt part of the reason for his status as a cult figure.’