tenue de ville

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French tenue de ville (literally “city dress”).

Noun

tenue de ville (uncountable)

1. (rare) Clothing suitable for an office or business setting, such as a business suit or skirt suit.
   • 1999, Ward Just, A Dangerous Friend, Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 171:

     No one would imagine that a man in an ice cream suit and a blue shirt, a tenue de ville as specified by his hostess, his arms full of liquor bottles, would have a bad conscience because he had failed to notice thunderheads on the horizon — but such was life in Llewellyn Group.

   • 2002, Paul Fussell, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear, Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 70:

     When it's needed, the priest, in tenue de ville, takes it from his pocket, unfolds it, kisses it, says a prayer, and then places it about his neck.

   • 2012, Maureen van Raaijen, The Little Black Dress For you, →ISBN, page 19:

     We have inherited only the remnants of this period: for example, in the form of uncertainty in dress etiquette that stresses us out when we read 'Tenue de Ville' on an invitation. What on earth am I going to wear, we hear ourselves saying?

Further reading

• tenue de ville on Wikipedia.Wikipedia