gentilhomme

plural gentilshommes · plural gentilhommes

1. A French gentleman.

   […] Maud would introduce her to society and help her find a husband from the gentilhommes of the local château aristocracy.

   2020, Judithe Little, “New Silhouettes”, in The Chanel Sisters, Toronto, Ont.: Graydon House, Harlequin Books S.A., →ISBN, chapter 23

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   Then M. de Montrond rose covered with glory and with honor, for in such adventures lay the fame of the gentilhommes of that time.

   1876 January, G. Colmache, “Gentilhomme and Gentleman”, in Lippincott’s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, volume XVII, Philadelphia, Pa.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott and Co., pages 82–83

   What they are doing is taking a view of life just a bit wider than that of the average London Regent’s Park smarty or the bourgeois gentilshommes.

   1967 April 15, Stanley Reynolds, “Television”, in The Guardian, number 37,561, London, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 5, column 3

   Outside in a spacious, leafy courtyard complete with table service, Double Bay matrons rub shoulders with trendies and gentilshommes of every description.

   1985 January 15, Geoffrey Stackhouse, “Fast Licks”, in The Sydney Morning Herald, number 45,880, Sydney, N.S.W., →ISSN, →OCLC, “Good Living” section, page 1, column 7

   And in spite of several omissions (Mrs. Clemens, their daughters, Susy and Clara, a companion for Mrs. Clemens and two servants were actually along), there is an implicit, underlying contract with the reader, providing the assurance that this journey was not invented out of whole cloth in Samuel Clemens's study back in Hartford, but that it actually took place, that it went approximately as described and that this fraternal pair of bourgeois gentilshommes is real.

   1995 June 18, Russell Banks, “How a Clergyman From Hartford Freed Huckleberry Finn”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 May 2015

   The salons became schools for assimilation into aristocratic manners. From women, bourgeois gentilhommes learned how to comport themselves.

   1997, Grace Anne Morsberger, The Russian Woman Writer in the Salon: Issues of Gender and Literary Space, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California, Berkeley, page 35