Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In French history, a member of the Fronde.
  • noun Hence An opponent of a party in power; a member of the opposition.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (F. Hist.) A member of the Fronde.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A political rebel

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Originally a member of the Fronde

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Examples

  • The statue of Etienne Marcel at the City Hall in Paris recalls one of the many instances of the resistance of the city to corrupt administration and it was under one of the most autocratic and greatest of monarchs, Louis XIV, that the Parisian earned the distinctive epithet of 'frondeur' to describe his quickness to resent any encroachment on the part of authority upon his civil rights and liberties.

    A Royalist Fiasco 1934

  • Ses ennemis, -- et son esprit frondeur lui en avait créé beaucoup à la cour, -- se plaisaient, pour le mortifier, à rappeler à tout propos son humble origine.

    French Conversation and Composition Harry Vincent Wann

  • His Eminence accused Eugène of being a frondeur; M. de Canaples, whose politics had grown sadly rusted in the country, asked me the meaning of the word.

    The Suitors of Yvonne: being a portion of the memoirs of the Sieur Gaston de Luynes Rafael Sabatini 1912

  • With many generations to come, the name of César de St. Auban must perforce be familiar as that of one of the greatest roysterers and most courtly libertines of the early days of Louis XIV., as well as that of a rabid anti-cardinalist and frondeur, and one of the earliest of that new cabal of nobility known as the petits-maîtres, whose leader the Prince de Condé was destined to become a few years later.

    The Suitors of Yvonne: being a portion of the memoirs of the Sieur Gaston de Luynes Rafael Sabatini 1912

  • This brilliant young officer, by nature somewhat a _frondeur_, was finally guilty of expressions so disrespectful as to lead to his removal shortly before that of Paoli.

    William Pitt and the Great War John Holland Rose 1898

  • The loss was indeed serious; for the young orator was far more than a _frondeur_.

    William Pitt and the Great War John Holland Rose 1898

  • Proud, hard to work with, jealous, and irascible, he was essentially the leader of opposition, the grumbler, and the _frondeur_.

    The History of England From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) Reginald Lane Poole 1892

  • The Fronde left behind it a sense of littleness, of poverty-stricken humanity, and this particular frondeur had seen the mask drop from the features of his fellow-men.

    Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France Edmund Gosse 1888

  • In spite of the invasion of its fertile valleys by Ayrshire dairy farmers it has remained the old Free Province, a little anti-Scottish, a good deal anti-Irish, excessively anti-English, self-centred, self-satisfied, quarrel-some and _frondeur_, yet in the main politically conservative.

    Patsy 1887

  • Diana dismissed it with contempt, as the shaft of a _frondeur_ discredited by both parties.

    The Testing of Diana Mallory Humphry Ward 1885

Comments

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  • A leader who's challenged must ponder

    How best to appease a fierce frondeur:

    Just gentle his grief

    With a French apertif.

    With absinthe the heart will grow fonder.

    January 9, 2016