flâneur

American  

[flah-nur, flah-nœr] / flɑˈnɜr, flɑˈnœr /

noun

French.

• flâneurs
  plural

1. a person who lounges or strolls around in a seemingly aimless way; an idler or loafer.

   the flâneur, that cool, aloof observer of urban society.

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flâneur British  

/ flɑnœr /

noun

1. an idler or loafer

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• flâneurs
  plural

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

See Examples For:

flâneur flâneurs

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

“He was the quintessential bohemian flâneur, just this extraordinary figure who you couldn’t miss walking up and down the streets.”

From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2024

In 1966, even as Ruscha rolled down the boulevard clicking his camera like an old-time flâneur, those convulsions were rocking the Sunset Strip.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 7, 2021

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 is perhaps not surprising that Sebald’s characters — most of whom are travelers or flâneurs of one kind or another — write as if steeped in melancholy.

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

Here was a man who could have enjoyed art among the artists, who could have been the wittiest of all the flâneurs; who could have made epigrams like diamonds and drunk music like wine.

From George Bernard Shaw by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton