Meanings
- not comparableAs a bachelor, or as if one were a bachelor; without one's wife.
"Were Lady Shropshire and Lady Silverlake there?" “Oh, no!—the husbands are doing Paris en garçon." "How very horrid!" she decides. "You wouldn't care to go about en garçon, would you, my own?” "Certainly not," he answers fervently. But he has made up his mind to go out en garçon all the same.
1887, Mrs. [wife of?] Alexander Fraser, “Drifting”, in Daughters of Belgravia, volume 3, London: F. V. White & Co., page 1161 more example
“Of course, we talked over your delightful dinner-party of last night,” he said, “and agreed in the agreeableness of it. And she asked me to dine there, en garçon, on Tuesday next. Of course, I said I must consult you first; […] But if there was nothing going on, I promised to dine there en garçon.” That phrase had evidently taken Major Ames’ fancy; there was a ring of youth about it, and he repeated it with gusto.
1912, E. F. Benson, chapter IV, in Mrs. Ames, Toronto; London: The Musson Book Company Limited; Hodder and Stoughton, pages 97-98
Origin
- Frenchen garçon
- Englishen garçon
Borrowed from French en garçon.
More words from French
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
en garçon. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/en%20gar%C3%A7on
“en garçon.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/en%20gar%C3%A7on. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “en garçon,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/en%20gar%C3%A7on.
Source: en garçon on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.