Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A sophisticated, socially active man who frequents fashionable places.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who frequents a boulevard, especially in Paris.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A frequenter of a city boulevard, esp. in Paris.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A man who frequents the boulevards; thus, a man about town or bon vivant.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a visitor of a city boulevard (especially in Paris)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Obsolete French, from boulevard, boulevard; see boulevard.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French boulevardier, from boulevard +‎ -ier.

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Examples

  • My Merriam-Webster 11th Edition, the standard medium-size 'Merkin dictionary, has "boulevardier" as showing up in 1871 as "a frequenter of the Parisian boulevards, broadly: MAN-ABOUT-TOWN".

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008

  • That focus led one critic to sneer that the dramatist "followed mid-century middle-class man into middle age using the middle-class conventions of the boulevardier to do it".

    In praise of... Simon Gray 2011

  • Reading "Gossip" is like watching Norman Mailer begin one of those sentences whose ending is not yet known to the author, the difference being that Mailer liked to pose as a Nietzschean Ubermensch taking leaps into existential voids while Mr. Epstein is a rambling boulevardier who just isn't sure yet where he'll eat lunch.

    Boulevardier's Delight Henry Allen 2011

  • If Menotti looks like the sort of care-worn, silk-shirted boulevardier you might stumble across singing a mournful version of For the Good Times in a Stockholm cabaret, Bilardo is the psychotic sea captain who'd jump on stage, slit his throat and fashion a necklace out of his vertebrae.

    Dressingroomistas v Structuralists: football's perennial problem 2011

  • That focus led one critic to sneer that the dramatist "followed mid-century middle-class man into middle age using the middle-class conventions of the boulevardier to do it".

    In praise of... Simon Gray 2011

  • Gorodetsky is cast as a boulevardier, sitting at a little table having a coffee.

    Festooned With Fantasy John Pancake 2010

  • Gorodetsky is cast as a boulevardier, sitting at a little table having a coffee.

    Festooned With Fantasy John Pancake 2010

  • Gorodetsky is cast as a boulevardier, sitting at a little table having a coffee.

    Festooned With Fantasy John Pancake 2010

  • It's a wonder that the authors didn't frame the story as a biography of Casper Holstein innovator, racketeer, proud black man, stylish boulevardier and even philanthropist.

    Gambling Days In Harlem Michael J. Agovino 2010

  • Gorodetsky is cast as a boulevardier, sitting at a little table having a coffee.

    Festooned With Fantasy John Pancake 2010

Comments

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  • The dictionary definitions seem to disagree with WordNet. They seem to have a connotation of someone who goes around town partying, as opposed to just visiting.

    October 9, 2009

  • Which would you rather do?

    October 10, 2009

  • "It is one thing to call someone a neat and careful dresser. It is another to call that person a dandy, or a clotheshorse, or a boulevardier. Each of these terms has slightly different meanings and conjures up a type."

    --New York Times A Fate That Narcissists Will Hate: Being Ignored by Charles Zanor, November 29, 2010

    December 1, 2010

  • boulevardier

    A sophisticated, socially active man who frequents fashionable places.

    February 23, 2022