Meanings
plural favoris
- A favorite.
Even more distinguished were the martyrs, enjoying her company without paying for it and maintaining the hope, however remote, of some day becoming her favori.
2010, Robert Greene, The 48 Laws Of Power, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 2573 more examples
Into the bargain with Marie, the American girl, who is grace itself, and comes leaping and dancing simply like a wave—like nothing else, and who yesterday was Queen out of the Epiphany cake and chose Robinet (the French Painter) as her favori with the most pretty confusion possible—into the bargain with Marie, we have two little Russian girls, with the youngest of whom, a little polyglot button of a three-year old, I had the most laughable little scene at lunch to-day.
1874, Robert Louis Stevenson, Letter to Mrs. Thomas StevensonWith characteristic humour, Ninon divided her admirers into three classes: her martyrs, her caprices and her favoris, and into one or other of these classes fell nearly every gallant in Paris.
1908, Lilian Rea, The Life and Times of Marie Madeleine Countess of La Fayette, Methuen, page 109Observers of his behavior were quick to note the inner conflict as revealed by the king's inability to be separated from his favori, and his cutting remarks about "King Luynes" in the heat of the siege warfare of 1621.
1991, A. Lloyd Moote, Louis XIII, the Just, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 149 - archaicin pluralSideburns or side whiskers.
Carefully combing out his favoris with a broken comb and greasing them with perfumed pomade flat over his sunken cheekbones, he fairly wriggled with his new sense of security and bodily comfort.
1915, Marcello Perathoner, The Girl Philippa4 more examples
M. de Whiskerburg was a very young man, very tall, with a very fine figure, and very fine features. In short, a sort of Hungarian Apollo; only his beard, his mustachios, his whiskers, his favoris, his padishas, his sultanas, his mignonettas, his dulcibellas, did not certainly entitle him to the epithet of imberbis, and made him rather an after-representative of the Hungarian Hercules.
1831, [Benjamin Disraeli], chapter XIX, in The Young Duke. […], volume II (book III), London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 247–248The Count twisted his favoris, twirled his moustaches, and bit his nether lip; then, taking up the Court Magazine, fixed his eyes on the portrait of the 'Hon. Frances Eleanor de Vere, Wentworth, St. Leger,' and muttered in an audible apostrophe, "How lovely! and how like!"
1835, Sydney Morgan, The Princesse; Or the Beguine, Baudry, page 386My normal condition is what my Broad-Church friend—that is, my quandam friend, for I have cut him—termed 'shoulder of mutton,' though I never heard of a should of mutton being soft and silky like my favoris.
1875, “Two Strings To One Beau”, in Tinsley's Magazine, volume 17, Tinsley Brothers, page 445they called him the phantom walrus – an animal, it is true, Tubbs had come to resemble, swathed against the fog and mist in an oversized raincoat (Tubbs was losing weight), his favoris bristling on his cheeks like tusks and glistening with weather.
1993, Rikki Ducornet, The Jade Cabinet, Dalkey Archive Press, page 141
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*bʰuH-der.?
- Proto-Indo-European*bʰeh₂-
- Proto-Indo-European*bʰh₂weh₁yetider.?
- Proto-Indo-European*gʷʰew-der.?
- Latinfaveō
- Latinfavor
- Italianfavore
- Italianfavorire
- Italianfavorito
- Old Frenchfavorit
- Italianfavorito
- Middle Frenchfavorit
- Frenchfavori
- Englishfavori
Borrowed from French favori. Doublet of favourite.
More words from French
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
favori. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/favori
“favori.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/favori. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “favori,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/favori.
Source: favori on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.