débonnaire

débonnaire (comparative more débonnaire, superlative most débonnaire)

1. Alternative form of debonair.
   • 1855 August 25, “A Day in a French Country-House”, in William Chambers, Robert Chambers, editors, Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts, volume IV, number 86, London: W. and R. Chambers, […] and […] Edinburgh, published 1856, page 123, column 1:

     I look up, and discern him perched in a cherry-tree, chanting loud in the innocent lightness of his spirits, and greeting me with a débonnaire ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle.’

   • 1865, Sarah Tytler [pseudonym; Henrietta Keddie], Citoyenne Jacqueline: A Woman’s Lot in the Great French Revolution, volume II, London: Alexander Strahan, […], page 91:

     Why, poor Jules was a débonnaire young fellow like me the other day,—peaceable, laborious; […]

   • 1875, [Mary Elizabeth Braddon], Hostages to Fortune: A Novel, volume III, London: John Maxwell and Co., […], pages 49–50:

     He explains in a débonnaire way the motive of his intrusion. […] The amount is eleven hundred and odd pounds, and in the event of Mrs. Westray not being ready to pay that sum, the débonnaire gentleman is hero to take possession of the aforesaid furniture by his minion, the man with the sleek hat.

   • 1885 July, Isabella Fyvie Mayo, “The Mystery of Allan Grale”, in Mrs. Henry Wood [i.e., Ellen Wood], editor, The Argosy, volume XL, London: Richard Bentley & Son, […], chapter XXV (At Work at Mrs. Grale’s), page 15:

     He went off to the mills as he spoke, walking with quite a débonnaire manner, for he knew she was watching him from the window.

   • 1891 May 2, Mrs. Leith Adams (Mrs. Laffan) [i.e., Bertha Jane Grundy], “A Garrison Romance”, in Charles Dickens [Jr.], editor, All the Year Round. A Weekly Journal., third series, volume V, London: […], page 429, column 1:

     “Oh,” said the other, in a débonnaire manner, “he’s no heart. […]”

   • 1899, B[ithia] M[ary] Croker, Terence, Toronto, Ont.: W. J. Gage & Company, Limited, page 3:

     “So do I, dear,” confessed Lady Flashe, a well-known society hostess who looked a débonnaire five-and-twenty, whilst a pitiless “Peerage” chronicled her age at forty-three.

   • 1902, Percy White, The New Christians, New York, N.Y.: The Federal Book Company, page 394:

     With a splendid effort of self-control, Eustace assumed a débonnaire manner.

   • 1903, John Coleman, Charles Reade as I Knew Him, London: Treherne & Company, […], page 362:

     As I turned away, heart-broken and in tears, a tall, stately, robust gentlemen came, I must not say swaggering, but lounging in, with a débonnaire grace, as if the place belonged to him—as indeed it did, for it was Charles Kemble himself!

   • 1904, Compton Reade, Mr. Sillifant Suckoothumb and Other Oxford Yarns, London: R. A. Everett & Co. (Ltd.), […], page 227:

     As a matter of history, some of the rapidest men in the University were not vicious, if scarcely paragons of virtue, while not a few combined with high spirits and a débonnaire disposition considerable brain power.

   • 1909, G[eorge] K[nottesford] Fortescue, “General Introduction”, in Memoirs of Madame Campan on Marie Antoinette and Her Court (Romances of Royalty), Boston, Mass.: J. B. Millet Company, page xxvii:

     The Frenchman, moreover, in a much greater degree than the men or women of other nationalities, is possessed of a débonnaire self-confidence which has played so great a part in the history and literature of France that it is impossible to pass it over in silence.

   • 1913 September 20, ““Years of Discretion” at the Globe Theatre”, in The Academy, volume LXXXV, London: Publishing Office, […], page 369, column 2:

     It is quite likely that a débonnaire and handsome man of fifty-something should be captivated by her charm of manner, for is she not Miss [Ethel] Irving?

   • 1915, Pearl Doles Bell, His Harvest, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company; London: John Lane, The Bodley Head; Toronto, Ont.: S. B. Gundy, page 39:

     It seems that her mother was a very great lady before her marriage with a débonnaire young adventurer outside the charmed circle and that this lady mother taught her instead of sending her to school.

   • 1917, Vernon [Lyman] Kellogg, Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in France and Belgium, Boston, Mass.: The Atlantic Monthly Press, page 51:

     As he swerved slightly to miss us, he intrusted his life—and ours—to one of his hands, while with the other he gave us a débonnaire salute.

   • 1921 October, George Jean Nathan, “In Defense of the Theatre”, in George Jean Nathan, H[enry] L[ouis] Mencken, editors, The Smart Set, volume LXVI, number 2, section III, page 135, column 2:

     The venerable theme of a husband and wife gone emotionally stale and advised by a débonnaire Charles Hawtrey to try divorce as a means of regaining their lost taste for each other was here laboriously deleted of its original virtues, given a fricassee of meek epigrams, and served up by a company of actors who toed the footlights like so many champing distance runners and suddenly let go each of their lines as if on pistol cues.

   • 1922 September, Dornford Yates [pen name; Cecil William Mercer], Jonah and Co., London, Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, published 1945, page 204:

     With a remonstrance in every finger[-]tip, a débonnaire Frenchman was laughingly upbraiding his fellow for giving him bad advice.

   • 1923–1924, Louis Joseph Vance, The Road to En-Dor: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: E. P. Dutton & Company, […], published September 1925, page 392:

     He made an uncertain halt, a débonnaire figure, twirling his folded pince-nez by its silken lanyard, well-pleased with himself and indifferent if all the world knew it.

   • 1969, Bernard Rudofsky, Streets for People: A Primer for Americans, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., page 330:

     “I guess the warm weather makes the sap run,” remarked a débonnaire police chief while surveying the weekend quota of vandalism in an eastern town.

   • 2000 [1892], [Marie Louise Points], “Clopin-Clopant”, in Francis G[odwin] James, Miriam G. Hill, editors, Joy to the World: Two Thousand Years of Christmas, Four Courts Press, →ISBN, page 215:

     It was a débonnaire crowd that followed Raoul that Christmas eve, a crowd who thought no prank too wild to play on an unsuspecting community, and whose sole aim seemed to be to get out of life all the fun that could be extracted without any thought of the consequences.

     From The Daily Picayune (25 December 1892), which has debonnaire instead.

Inherited from Old French debonaire et al, from de bone aire (“of a good bloodline”).

• IPA^(key): /de.bɔ.nɛʁ/

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débonnaire (plural débonnaires)

1. kind; gentle, good
2. (derogatory) weak-willed; soft

• “débonnaire”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• Aberdonien, aberdonien