fainéant

To be a fainéant ruler was in direct antagonism both to his conscience and his predilections.

From The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope

George de Lacorfe, fashionable, fainéant and forty, reader of The Pink 'Un, ardent bachelor, Basker in short, suddenly finds the dukedom of Cheviot thrust upon him.

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 by Sir Owen Seaman

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

You call me trifler, fainéant, And bid me give my life an aim!—

From Point Lace and Diamonds by Francis Day

Doubtless the fainéant condition of nearly all the daimyōs at this time made the accomplishment of this event more easy.

From Japan by David Murray

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

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

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

Bold might the planton be; we were no fainéants.

From The Enormous Room by E. E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings