dejeuner
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Forms: form: dejeuners
form: dejeunering
form: dejeunered
form: dejeunered
Senses: examples: text: He wants the frankness (now) of manner which alone could carry a man in his position through an hour’s dejeunering with squab citymen who had no notion of what it would be proper to say to him.
ref: 1855 July 23, E., “Sketches of the Emperor and Empress at Guildhall and the Opera-House”, in The Age, number 237, Melbourne, Vic., page 7, column 6:
text: As during my stay at Phalsburg I have been dejeunering and dining with the German commandant and officers, the contrast between their mode of thought and that of my French friends is very striking.
ref: 1871 February 7, S. J. Capper, “M. Erckmann”, in Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, number 5,563, Newcastle upon Tyne, published 25 February 1871, page 5, column 7:
text: “Got up—washed—breakfasted—dejeunered—dined—smoked—went to bed.”
ref: 1872, William John Leigh Maxwell, Letters of an Engineer While on Service in Syria in Connection with the Proposed Euphrates Valley Railway and the Beyrout Waterworks, London: Marcus Ward & Co., […], published 1886, page 274:
text: No epicures were enlisted in the party which dd^([sic]) homage tonight to Tour d’Argent duck, only plain Americans, who swore by plain beefsteaks and never met in Paris without questioning one another in an illiterate and scoffing way, “Have you dejeunered?” to show their contempt for the customs of the country.
ref: 1899 April 2, Robert M. Collis, “With All Due Solemnity: How a Duck Is Cooked at the Famous Tour d’Argent. Differs From Other Restaurants—The Chef Has All the Dignity of a High Priest—Latest Fad in Paris.”, in The Macon Telegraph, Macon, Ga., page 5, column 3:
text: “Here, waiter,” cried the Johnnie who had dejeunered daringly at 12, “take this bill to the manager and tell him it’s an imposition. Why, you’ve charged more for one poached egg on toast than for an entire portion of those eggs that you scramble.”
ref: 1903 February 4, “Humourist”, in The Sydney Mail, volume LXXV, number 2222, Sydney, N.S.W., page 278, column 1:
text: So many times has J. F. Sartori, the wide-awake president of the Security National Bank, knocked about Europe, bracing himself of a foggy morning on London sole and bacon, dejeunering in elegant Paris, sipping small blacks in Vienna, and dining amid the tapers of Rome or Venice, that I saw, as a matter of fact, the origin of the Security’s artistic clock. the most striking architectural adornment on Spring street: […]
ref: 1916 September 30, “[By the Way] Sartori’s Inspiration American Not Foreign”, in A. D. Porter, editor, Los Angeles Graphic, volume XLIX, number 14, Los Angeles, Calif., page 5, column 3:
text: Still holding your arm, and rejecting with wild gesticulations your suggestion that a cab might–er–drop you somewhere near the Batignolles, he would hurry you across that thoroughfare, where the chauffeurs are more murderous than they are here, and by uphill streets whose names you never, never could remember, land you panting in the little porch of the Cafe de l’Athene, where you found that wild Irishman P. J. waiting. Here you dejeunered, and listened chiefly to P.J. telling Victor just how much Verlaine was over-rated.
ref: 1919 May 29, “Egotism”, in The China Mail, number 17,476, Hong Kong, page 4, column 3:
text: He offhandedly invited the stodgy Germans to drop into breakfast with Premier Herriot and himself, to talk over matters, a sort of thing the Germans do not understand—breakfasting or dejeunering, we mean.
ref: 1924 August 11, “The State’s Survey”, in The State, Columbia, S.C., page 4, column 2:
text: I dejeunered at 12. Then rest and sleep (much needed).
ref: a. 1935, Edward Elgar, edited by Percy M[arshall] Young, Letters of Edward Elgar and Other Writings, London: Geoffrey Bles, published 1956, page 159:
glosses: Alternative form of déjeuner.