Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A woman's private sitting room, dressing room, or bedroom.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A small room to which a lady may retire to be alone, or in which she may receive her intimate friends.
Wiktionary
- n. A woman’s private sitting room, dressing room, or bedroom.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A small room, esp. if pleasant, or elegantly furnished, to which a lady may retire to be alone, or to receive intimate friends; a lady's bedroom; a lady's (or sometimes a gentleman's) private room.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a lady's bedroom or private sitting room
Etymologies
- French, from Old French bouder, to sulk.
Examples
“This little summer-house, which he called his boudoir, was not much bigger than a sedan-chair; the door of it opened into the garden, which was covered with pinks, roses, and honeysuckles.”
“Before dinner I showed her my husband's pictures; and she was especially pleased with that which hung in the little room off the study, which I called my boudoir, -- a very ugly word, by the way, which I am trying to give up, -- with a curtain before it.”
“When Lawrence was gone, the old soldier found his daughter in a tastefully arranged closet which she called her boudoir, the miniature glass-door of which opened on a luxuriant garden, where wood, water, sunshine, and herbage, wild and tame, seemed to revel for the mastery.”
“Lady R-- rang the bell of the sitting-room, which she called a boudoir, and a lad of fourteen, in a blue blouse and leather belt made his appearance.”
“Knowing what a sperm and egg get up to in the privacy of their own boudoir is all very well, but understanding that if you let yourself be videoed having sex that film can be used against you is perhaps more useful.”
The Guardian: Shag bands, porn on mobile phones … kids need more help to understand sex
“Her boudoir is studded round with skulls like a charnel-house; and bold and dirty creatures from St. Giles come into her very dressing - room, with their rickety brats in their arms, to put their large misshapen heads under her inspection, as the future mighty geniuses of the land.”
Feminist Utopianism and Female Sexuality in Joanna Baillies Comedies
“Though the dictionary says that a boudoir is "un petit salon de dame," * it is really nothing more fancy or exciting than a pouting room.”
“I know a woman whose first-floor rooms are very artistically furnished in blue and gray, whose boudoir is in rose and ivory, and whose sewing room -- "her workshop" she calls it -- is in softest gray.”
“The flat on the right comprised a hall, a large drawing-room, a smaller sitting-room they called a boudoir, three bedrooms, a dining-room, a kitchen and a bathroom.”
Maigret's Little Joke
“The word boudoir was a sweetmeat to Lena's palate, combined, as it was, with the knowledge that her visitor, with a sister, kept house in three rooms.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘boudoir’.
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Jeeves and Wooster - Jeeves
"Jeevesisms" as heard from the valet Jeeves in P.G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves and Wooster" stories.
temptations of a ..., with due expediency, outspoken disposi..., spring unbidden t..., simplicity of genius, natural gratifica..., under the delusion, warmly ensconced, merry mélange, opprobrious remark, respectable woman, taciturnity and 29 more...
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Words that shouldn't be used on a first date.
probation, trekkie, wart, unemployed, fetish, suspended driver'..., felon, aerophagia, undies, debt collector, girlfriend, boyfriend and 261 more...
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phonetically speaking
they just sound nice
veranda, sequoia, boudoir, plinth, sinews, abeyance, engastrimyth, circumlocution, acedia, cadaver, ether
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bianca's euphonic list
paprika, poignant, poignancy, viscous, subtlety, robust, vehicular, combustion, viscosity, velocity, rotunda, malignant and 18 more...

bianca08 i love this word, it has such a soothing sound to it Apr 29, 2008
frindley Mozart wants to set his opera The Marriage of Figaro in a boudoir:
"Because I want to do a piece about real people, Baron! And I want to set it in a real place! A boudoir! – because that to me is the most exciting place on earth! Underclothes on the floor! Sheets still warm from a woman's body! Even a pisspot brimming under the bed!"
(Amadeus, Peter Shaffer) Apr 19, 2008
seanahan I have to restrain myself from making an inappropriate comment. Dec 29, 2006
the_grene_kni3t Fun fact: "Boudoir" comes from the Old French verb "bouder" meaning "to sulk". A boudoir is a lady's private sulking-room. Dec 29, 2006