| 释义 |
‖ fainéant, n. and a.|fɛneɑ̃|
Also 7 fainiant, faitneant, faytneant.
[F. fainéant (16th c. also fait-néant) ‘do-nothing’, f. fait, 3rd pers. sing. pres. of faire to do + néant nothing; really an etymologizing perversion of OF. faignant sluggard (still current as a vulgarism), pr. pple. of faindre to skulk: see faint.]
A. n. One who does nothing; an idler. Often with allusion to the rois fainéants, ‘sluggard kings’, a designation of the later Merovingians.
1619Sir D. Carleton in Eng. & Germ. (Camden) 93 The two last Emperors..were both faineants. 1621[see factotum 1]. 1672Petty Pol. Anat. (1691) 13 There are yet to spare..Casherers and Fait-neants, 220,000. 1855H. G. Liddell Hist. Rome v. xlvi, The fainéans who had disappointed them could hardly appear in public.
B. adj. That does nothing; indolent, idle.
1855Milman Lat. Chr. (1864) IX. xiv. i. 14 The fainéant Merovingians. 1868M. Pattison Academ. Org. iv. 163 The faineant aristocrat and apathetic dullard. |