fainéant
Example Sentences
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To be a fainéant ruler was in direct antagonism both to his conscience and his predilections.
From The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
It is only for the loafer that he has no pity; when he has called a fellow-creature fainéant, he has used the strongest invective in his vocabulary.
From English Pharisees and French Crocodiles and Other Anglo-French Typical Characters by Max O'Rell
Even after Tullia was dead the Republic had come again for him, and something might be done to stir up these fainéant nobles!
From The Life of Cicero Volume II. by Anthony Trollope
Accomplished antiquarians and “commissioners” assisted him in his labours; but he was no roi fainéant on the editorial sofa which he so complacently describes.
From Dickens English Men of Letters by Sir Adolphus William Ward
And whereas Sieyès condemned his grand functionary to the repose of a roi fainéant, Bonaparte secured to him practically all the powers assigned by Sieyès to the Consuls for Peace and for War.
From The Life of Napoleon I (Volume 1 of 2) by John Holland Rose
She extols them both, and makes over to their joint care and tuition the fainéants aforesaid.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 by Various
Any quantity of heraldries of knaves and fainéants you may find in what they call their 'history': but this is probably the first time you ever read the name of Robert of Luzarches.
From Our Fathers Have Told Us Part I. The Bible of Amiens by John Ruskin
After Dagobert's death these mayors practically ruled in the place of the Merovingian monarchs, who became mere "do-nothing kings,"—rois fainéants, as the French call them.
From An Introduction to the History of Western Europe by James Harvey Robinson
Others are weaklings, fainéants; but one, the most dread woman in Frankish history, Fredegonda, the queen of Chilperic, towers above all in this masque of slaughter and treachery.
From Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine by Lewis Spence
Bold might the planton be; we were no fainéants.
From The Enormous Room by E. E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings
