tenue de ville

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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

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