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faute de mieux. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French faute de mieux.
Pronunciation
Adverb
faute de mieux (comparative more faute de mieux, superlative most faute de mieux)
- For want of something better; for lack of an alternative; as a makeshift.
- 1823, "Select Society, With Observations on the Modern Art of Matchmaking", in The New Monthly Magazine,by C. M., pub. E. W. Allen,, volume 8 pages 91-92:
- Then, Alas! any body was company for every body and the first lord of the land did not think it shame, faute de mieux, to take up with the conversation of his butler, or his game-keeper, over a tankard; while the young ladies, faute de tout, danced "Bobbing Joan," with the rest of the domestics in the servants' hall.
1998, “homosexuality”, in Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, editors, The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilisation, Oxford, published 2004, →ISBN, page 353:Among the explanations commonly advanced are: (1) Greek males were driven to seek romance and sexual gratification with other males, faute de mieux, by the seclusion and enforced intellectual impoverishment of *women; (2) […]
Translations
for want of something better
French
Pronunciation
Adverb
faute de mieux
- for want of something better, faute de mieux
1572, Henri Lancelot Voisin de la Popelinière, La vraye et entière Histoire des Troubles, et Choses memorables avenues tant en France qu'en Flandres, & pays circonuoisins, depuis l'an 1562, Davantes:Ioint que nous voyons au contraire que si quelcun se met à discourir vainement & sans merite des gestes de quelque nation: faute de mieux toute la posterité (comme esperoit P. Ioue de ses fabuleuses histoires) est contrainte d’y aiouster foy: et ne pense-on autre chose notable y estre auenue que ce qu’on en trouue par escrit.- (please add an English translation of this quotation)
Descendants
See also