débonnaire

comparative more débonnaire · superlative most débonnaire

1. alternativeAlternative form of debonair.

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

   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

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   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.’

   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

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

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

   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.

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

   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.

   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

   “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.

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