Word.ws English Dictionary

bienséance

bienséance noun: propriety, decorum.

Noun

bienséance (uncountable)

  1. Propriety, decorum.
    • In the evening it was very different; and, bred in a country where much attention is paid, or was at least then paid, to bienseance, I was desirous to think for Miss Vernon concerning those points of propriety where her experience did not afford her the means of thinking for herself.1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter I, in Rob Roy. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees...

Origin of bienséance

Borrowed from French bienséance.

Questions about bienséance

What does bienséance mean?
Bienséance means propriety, decorum.
What part of speech is bienséance?
Bienséance is a noun.

Words near bienséance in the dictionary

  1. biennially
  2. biennials
  3. biennium
  4. bienniums
  5. Biens
  6. bienséance
  7. Bienvenu
  8. Bienvenus
  9. Bienville
  10. Bienville Parish
  11. bienzymatic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bienséance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bienséance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/biens%C3%A9ance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.