affreux

1. pluralplural onlyA group of particularly brutal mercenaries who were active in Africa and Asia during the 1960s.

   As one Belgian journalist wrote: The affreux ["frightful ones"] are outstanding in combat.

   1972, Jean-Claude Willame, Patrimonialism and Political Change in the Congo, →ISBN, page 74

   5 more examples

   I could no longer find anything affected in that long smooth white face but an extreme kindness and a sort of obstinate candour; Vian was as Herv in his detestation of the affreux [the frightful ones] as in loving what he loved.

   1998, John Sturrock, The Word from Paris: Essays on Modern French Thinkers and Writers, →ISBN

   These were mostly, but not exclusively, members of the Baluba tribe and had fled the persecution of Munongo's mercenary affreux and their black rank-and-file.

   2003, Máire O'Brien, The same age as the state, page 249

   It takes a rather wilful ignorance to refuse to recognize the essential difference between, say, the affreux of mid-twentieth-century Africa and the Royal Gurkha Rifles, though both could loosely be described as mercenaries.

   2010, Martin Windrow, Our Friends Beneath the Sands, →ISBN

   He had once been one of the dreaded affreux, the “frightful ones,” the white freelance soldiers who helped keep dictators in power throughout Africa and Asia.

   2014, Joseph Finder, The Zero Hour, →ISBN

   France's return to Comoros was, above all, conspicuous through the actions of the mercenary leader Bob Denard and his team of affreux ('dreadful').

   2015, Tor Sellström, Africa in the Indian Ocean: Islands in Ebb and Flow, →ISBN, page 169

comparative more affreux · superlative most affreux

1. rareDreadful; disturbing or frightening.

   Orpheus calls the sound 'affreux'; the examiners may have agreed.

   2001, Julian Rushton, The Music of Berlioz, →ISBN, page 22

   4 more examples

   And when I signified my intention of making a tour of the whole province, they most earnestly advised me to alter my plans, and occupy my time in visiting some other part of the kingdom; for they assured me, that all travellers who attempted Basse Bretagne, returned in disgust before they went more thant a few stages into the country, for that its general aspect was that of desolation itself; the roads were impassable ; and the people dirty, ragged barbarians, living in filthy huts, and clothed in sheepskins; that, in short, everything was affreux.

   1830, The Cambrian Quarterly Magazine and Celtic Repertory

   It was in rain that some common friends represented the tort affreux — the frightful mischief he would do the government of his own creation, if he published this work — all in vain: his honor, his conscience, and his patriotism, required that he should raise his voice in defence of the charter, which the king and his ministers equally violate — and the work is published!

   1834, The London Quarterly Review - Issues 103-106, page 141

   No doubt they would be talking about the affreux – dreadful – Germans. Not so affreux, of course, that one refused to get rich off them.

   2011, Alan Furst, Red Gold, →ISBN

   As soon as they were in the courtyard, she whispered, “M. Hoffmann has just appeared looking affreux. And he brought with him his father of all things!”

   2012, Elizabeth Musser, Two Testaments: A Novel, →ISBN, page 300