A.Word.A.Day --boulevardier

A.Word.A.Day

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Sep 12, 2016

This week’s theme
Words to describe people

This week’s words
boulevardier
pachyderm
revenant
rhapsode
bon viveur

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Who are you? You have to answer the question in a job interview. Who am I? You ask yourself if you’re introspective. What words describe you? You might be asked if you are playing a party game.

How do you describe yourself? Not easy, but perhaps this week’s words will come in handy.

boulevardier

PRONUNCIATION:

(bool-uh-vahr-DYAY, -DEER)

MEANING:

noun: A socially active man who likes to visit fashionable places.

ETYMOLOGY:

From French, originally a man who frequents boulevards, from boulevard (a wide street), from Old French bollevart (rampart converted to a promenade), from Middle Dutch or German bollwerk (bulwark). Earliest documented use: 1879.

USAGE:

“In the first act, I was a smoothly sophisticated boulevardier who was having a giddy night out in an elegant restaurant with a young girl approximately half his age. He is a delightful ‘stranger’ from Cairo in impeccable evening clothes who comes mysteriously into town once a month.”
Beaumont Bruestle; Threads; CreateSpace; 2009.

See more usage examples of boulevardier in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (12 Sep 1880-1956)

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