Definitions

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

  • noun Someone suffering from tuberculosis, or a similar lung disease.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French poitrinaire, from poitrine ("chest").

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Examples

  • In this, climate, and being 'poitrinaire', one doesn't make experiments.

    The Island Pharisees John Galsworthy 1900

  • In this, climate, and being 'poitrinaire', one doesn't make experiments.

    Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works John Galsworthy 1900

  • WOLFE was a _poitrinaire_, and NELSON would never have passed the medical examination to which the naval cadets of to-day are subjected.

    Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 Various 1898

  • Paris, also a _poitrinaire_, [354] and as this, if not as the other, the pet and protégée, in a _quasi_-honourable fashion, of an old duke, whose daughter, closely resembling Marguerite, has actually died of consumption.

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century George Saintsbury 1889

  • And comparatively short as his working life proved to be -- hampered for ten years by the sternest poverty, and for nearly ten more by the sad, illusive optimism of the poitrinaire -- the task of the mere surveyor is no light or perfunctory one.

    The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories George Gissing 1880

  • With all its gifts and opportunities it was a melancholy life -- melancholy with something not altogether explained by the somewhat pessimistic philosophy exposed in the Journal, nor by the consumptive tendency of Amiel's physical constitution, causing him from a very early date to be much preoccupied with the effort to reconcile himself with the prospect of death, and reinforcing the far from sanguine temperament of one intellectually also a poitrinaire.

    Essays from 'The Guardian' Walter Pater 1866

  • I remember that when he was a candidate for the Assembly, one of the popular cries, as reported by the newspapers of the time, was _A bas le poitrinaire!

    Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • I remember that when he was a candidate for the Assembly, one of the popular cries, as reported by the newspapers of the time, was _A bas le poitrinaire!

    Our Hundred Days in Europe Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • It was Cytheris, the fickle actress ” if the scholiasts are right ” who opened his eyes to the fact that there were themes for passionate poetry nearer home than the legendary love-tales; and when she forgot him, finding excitement elsewhere during his months of service with Octavian, he nursed his morbid grief in un-Roman self-pity, this first poet of the poitrinaire school.

    Vergil Frank, Tenney, 1876-1939 1922

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