boulevardier

noun

bou·le·vard·ier ˌbu̇-lə-ˌvär-ˈdyā

ˌbü-,

-ˈdir

: a frequenter of the Parisian boulevards

broadly : man-about-town

: a cocktail consisting essentially of Campari, sweet vermouth, and rye whisky or bourbon

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The first boulevardiers got their name from the thoroughfares they frequented: the typically straight and geometrically precise boulevards of Paris. These particular men must have cut an impressive figure because the word boulevardier was eventually applied to any worldly and socially active man. Unlike many near-synonyms, "boulevardier" is generally a complimentary term. It differs from "flaneur" in that the latter refers to someone who is idle, and it doesn't imply the same vanity and foolishness that words like "fop," "dandy," and "coxcomb" do.

Examples of boulevardier in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Ghost is first and foremost a boulevardier, like every Goodwood Rolls-Royce, engineered for wafting along Sunset Boulevard, PCH or Huntington Drive. —

Mark Ewing, Forbes, 3 July 2022 The restaurant, By George, was closed, but the bartender served me a classic boulevardier. —

Tayari Jones, Travel + Leisure, 26 Mar. 2022 Try it neat before mixing it into your next boulevardier. —

Celine Bossart, Travel + Leisure, 4 Nov. 2021 Glenn O’Brien was the leading boulevardier of my particular subgenerational pocket, the one that thrived in lower Manhattan from the last days of the hippie era until sometime around the end of the 1990s. —

Luc Sante, The New York Review of Books, 9 Apr. 2020

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