man about town
See also: man-about-town
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Noun
man about town (plural men about town)
- A worldly, social man who frequents fashionable places.
- Synonyms: boulevardier, flaneur
- Coordinate terms: bon vivant, dandy, socialite, woman about town
- 1886, Punch, volume 91, page 249:
- For in this quality of “clubbable,” and the value now put upon it, lies the whole secret of change in our fast men, mashers, and men about town.
- 1902, W. Somerset Maugham, Mrs Craddock, 1992 penguin Classics ed., →ISBN, page 71:
- To Bertha this was a charm rather than a defect; his bashful candour touched her, and she compared it favourably with the foolish worldliness of the imaginary man about town whose dissipation she always opposed to her husband's virtues.
Translations
a worldly, social man who frequents fashionable places
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Further reading
- “man about town”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.