Talk:adventurer

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search

RFC discussion: December 2016–November 2020[edit]

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.


Sense "A social pretender on the lookout for advancement; one who pushes his fortune by equivocal means, as false pretences." WTF does that mean? Who speaks like that nowadays anyway? --Derrib9 (talk) 02:22, 27 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

The wording has since been improved. I wasn't familiar with this sense, but it roughly tracks with one of OED's definitions: "A person who looks for chances of personal advancement, esp. one willing to take risks or use dishonest methods to attain it; one who lives by his or her wits." Could definitely use a quotation or two. This is one of the OED's and it's quite clear. The last paragraph here also looks promising. Colin M (talk) 10:09, 5 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
In old novels an "adventuress" is usually what we would today call a "gold-digger", i.e. an unscrupulous woman trying to marry into money or similar. Equinox 13:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)Reply