pur sang

adjective

Beyond doubt or being a model example; the ne plus ultra or epitome; the definitive.

“the Art Deco painter pur sang”

OriginFrench pur-sang →
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Meanings

adjectivepur sang (not comparable)
  1. not comparablepostpositionalBeyond doubt or being a model example; the ne plus ultra or epitome; the definitive.

    the Art Deco painter pur sang

    4 more examples

    The Duke of Punch is too true an Aristocrat, pur sang, to be afraid of avowing his liking for anything […]

    1860 May 26, “Punch’s Essence of Parliament”, in Punch, volume XXXVIII, page 209

    For it is only the old-fashioned sort, not girls of the period pur sang, that marry for love, or put the husband before the banker.

    1868, Elizabeth Lynn Linton, Modern women and what is said of them: Reprint of a series of articles in the Saturday review, J.S. Redfield

    Three points about this unobtrusive person showed promptly to the exercised eye that he was not a Row man pur sang. First, an irrepressible wrinkle or two in the waist of his frock-coat—denoting that he had not damned his tailor sufficiently to drive that tradesman up to the orthodox high pressure of cunning workmanship.

    1872 September – 1873 July, Thomas Hardy, “‘We Frolic while ’Tis May’”, in A Pair of Blue Eyes. […], volume II, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1873, →OCLC, page 20

    But she had the grand reach forward! I never saw such a line! / Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear half-cock, / Hard-bit, pur sang, from her overhang to the heel of her off hind sock.

    1906, Arthur Quiller-Couch, “The Famous Ballad of the Jubilee Cup”, in From a Cornish Window

Origin

  1. Frenchpur-sang“pure blood or thoroughbred (as used of a horse)”
  2. Englishpur sang

From French pur-sang (“pure blood or thoroughbred (as used of a horse)”), from pur (“pure”) and sang (“blood”).

More words from French

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

pur sang. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pur%20sang

MLA

“pur sang.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pur%20sang. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “pur sang,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pur%20sang.

Source: pur sang on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.