flâneur
Americannoun
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flâneurs
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of flâneur
First recorded in 1850–55; from French: literally, “loafer, idler, man about town,” equivalent to flân-, stem of flâner “to waste time” + -eur ( def. ); cf. flânerie ( def. )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Is the dog a fellow flâneur in the Weimar city, a mirror of its owner, or perhaps his alter ego?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
The French future belonged to the flâneur, the man of sensibility, at home in the crowd.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 15, 2026
A man like Rivera — just look at him — wasn’t about to sit on the sidelines like some wasted flâneur.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 25, 2022
Driving around town with his friend and travel companion Cicero, in Cicero’s little red roadster, he becomes the flâneur with wheels, greeting the past as he goes.
From New York Times ● Feb. 19, 2018
For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate observer, it is an immense pleasure to choose his home in number, change, motion, in the fleeting and the infinite.
From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 4 by Hamilton Wright Mabie
He’s a walker in the city in conscious league with Walt Whitman, but also with writers up through Teju Cole, whose protagonists are wide-awake flâneurs.
From New York Times ● Sep. 2, 2014
The 21st century flâneurs at the center of these novels are dislocated and wayward.
From Salon ● Feb. 4, 2013
It’s not surprising that these 21st-century flâneurs are different creatures from their 19th-century predecessors.
From Salon ● Feb. 4, 2013
People who inhabit through motion include desert-dwellers, obliged to move with herds in search of feeding grounds and markets, and 19th-century flâneurs, gentleman strollers in search of fascination.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 11, 2012
The men and women whom I met in the street escape description; the flâneurs of the Unter den Linden are exactly like the flâneurs of the Boulevard des Italiens.
From Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5 Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1 by Francis W. (Francis Whiting) Halsey
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
