bachelor

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“
I suspect that many a bachelor is a bachelor because his early love is fixed on the mother.

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Definitions (18)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. noun An unmarried man.
  2. noun A person who has completed the undergraduate curriculum of a college or university and holds a bachelor's degree.
  3. noun A male animal that does not mate during the breeding season, especially a young male fur seal kept from the breeding territory by older males.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (10)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • Despite Lady Alys's warning that a family meal might prove to be a strain for a bachelor, the young Spensers were excellent dinner companions. —  Mary Jo Putney - The Rake.htm
  • It was my first experiment of living there as a bachelor, as I was going to say, but I mean “on my own hook,” and left altogether to my own devices. —  What I Remember, Volume 2
  • My fortune was enough for a bachelor, and I did not intend to marry, at least for a long time. —  Philip Gilbert Hamerton
  • In an interview he once blamed the Chabad movement for his remaining a bachelor which is why that theme comes up so often with many of his critics. —  FailedMessiah.com
  • I never knew that being a bachelor was a courageous decision .... —  Post Politics: Political News and Views in Tennessee
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English bacheler, squire, youth, bachelor, from Old French, from Medieval Latin baccalārius, tenant farmer, perhaps of Celtic origin.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Early modern English also bacheler, batchelor, batcheler, -ar, -our, batchler, etc.; from Middle English bacheler, bachiler, bachler, etc., from (a) Old French bacheler = Italian baccalare = Provencal bacalar, from Middle Latin baccalaris; (b) later Old French bachelier, bachilier, etc., French bachelier = Provencal bachallier = Spanish bachiller = Italian baccalliere, from Middle Latin baccalarius, bacchalarius, etc. (later baccalaureus: see baccalaureate), a bachelor. Origin uncertain; supposed by some to be orig. connected with Middle Latin baccalarius, the holder, as vassal of a superior vassal, of a farm called baccalaria, perhaps from bacca, for L. vacca, a cow. By others the Old French bacheler, in the assumed orig. sense of ‘a young man,’ is connected with Old French bacele, bacelle, bachele, bachelle (with diminutive bacelette, bachelote), a young woman, a female servant, bachelerie, youth, bacelage, apprenticeship, courtship, etc., words erroneously referred to a Celtic origin (Welsh bach, little, bechan, a little girl, bachgen, a boy, a child). The history of the forms mentioned above is not clear. Perhaps several independent words have become confused in form.
 

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/ˈbætʃɛlər/
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