flaneur

noun

fla·​neur flä-ˈnər How to pronounce flaneur (audio)
variants or less commonly flâneur
: an idle man-about-town

Examples of flaneur in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web The image in my mind just changed—from the rugged rule-breaker on the road to the flaneur, the person with the time to amble around the city at leisure. Ruthie Ackerman, Vogue, 27 Dec. 2023 But the hotel offers plenty of alternatives to dropping your euros, including a Dior spa, a calming pool, and a ground-floor terrace bar for prime flaneur-watching, all designed by LVMH favorite Peter Marino and realized by his squad of about 600 French artisans. Erin Florio, Condé Nast Traveler, 14 Dec. 2021 These best-selling books display the trenchant wit of a flaneur strolling through Babylon. Brenda Wineapple, The New York Review of Books, 19 Oct. 2022 Some visitors, happily aware that there’s a flaneur’s funhouse—the visual onslaught of SoHo—just beyond the doors of the Drawing Center, will be primed to experience the show as one more twist in the contemporary spectacle. Jed Perl, The New York Review of Books, 3 Aug. 2022 Being a flaneur suggests also a freedom—to roam, to go in whichever direction one chooses, unencumbered by the authorities. Anandi Mishra, The Atlantic, 30 July 2022 In its narrowest definition, a flaneur is simply someone who wanders. Anandi Mishra, The Atlantic, 30 July 2022 The flaneur was a familiar figure in nineteenth-century Paris: a solitary, quasi-artistic man (though not always) who strolled the streets like an urban epicure. Julian Barnes, The New York Review of Books, 27 Apr. 2022 In my conception, to visit Wikipedia was to be a flaneur, wandering unharmed from interesting edifice to interesting edifice. Noam Cohen, Wired, 4 Jan. 2021

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flaneur.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

French flâneur

First Known Use

1854, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of flaneur was in 1854

Dictionary Entries Near flaneur

Cite this Entry

“Flaneur.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flaneur. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

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