Word.ws English Dictionary

cavalier

Syllables: cav·a·lier/ˌkævəˈlɪɚ/US/ˈkæ.vəˌlir/

cavalier adjective: lacking the proper care or concern for something important, reckless, rash, high-handed. Also the alternative letter-case form of Cavalier.

Adjective

cavalier (comparative more cavalier, superlative most cavalier)

  1. Lacking the proper care or concern for something important, reckless, rash, high-handed.
    • But, on the following day, no sign of Poirot. I was getting angry. He was really treating us in the most cavalier fashion.1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 144
    • Such a cavalier attitude might seem to suggest that doctors consider the uterus as dispensable an organ as, say, an appendix—and some feminists have accused the medical profession of just such callousness […]2012, Barbara Seaman, Laura Eldridge, Voices of the Women's Health Movement (volume 1)
  2. High-spirited.
  3. Supercilious.
  4. (obsolete) Free and easy; unconcerned with formalities
    • Leporello (a surname that proved the antechamber not to be wholly illiterate), far from resembling Don Juan’s trembling valet, was a handsome young man, with an animated face, nimble in gait, and of cavalier manners; wearing elegantly enough the clothes which had, doubtless, appertained to his...1846, Marie Joseph Eugène Sue, Martin the foundling; or, The memoirs of a valet de chambre, Harper, page 323
    Antonyms:
    stiff
  5. (historical) Of or pertaining to the party of King Charles I of England (1600–1649).

Noun (1)

cavalier (plural cavaliers)

  1. (historical) A military man serving on horse, (chiefly) early modern cavalry officers who had abandoned the heavy armor of medieval knights.
    Synonyms:
    chevalier
  2. (historical) A gallant: a sprightly young dashing military man.
  3. (historical) A gentleman of the class of such officers.
  4. (slang) Someone with an uncircumcised penis.
    • The roundheads in the school showers easily equalled the cavaliers.1992, John Hoyland, Fathers and Sons, page 94
    • Since penile preference is so tied up with personal aesthetics and body image, it seems both logical and fair to leave the choice of cavalier or roundhead to the owner of the organ, thus avoiding the sort of life-long pain expressed in a comment like this:[…]2008, “Objections of a sentimental character: The subjective dimension of foreskin loss”, in Matatu, number 37, →OCLC, page 158
    Antonyms:
    roundhead
  5. A defensive work rising from a bastion, etc., and overlooking the surrounding area.

Verb

cavalier (third-person singular simple present cavaliers, present participle cavaliering, simple past and past participle cavaliered)

  1. (dated, transitive) Of a man: to act in a gallant and dashing manner toward (women).
    • His social and kind nature is inferred from his cavaliering the ladies Percy and Mortimer, and introducing them, before their husbands depart for the war.1863, Charles Cowden Clarke, Shakespeare-characters; Chiefly Those Subordinate, page 427
    • "I thought," Graeme burred at him, transfixing him with shrewd eyes, "that you were cavaliering the Italian girl, Beatrice Cenci or Vittoria Colonna or whatever her name is?"1916, Good Housekeeping, volume 64, page 113

Proper noun capitalized: Cavalier

Cavalier

  1. A small city, the county seat of Pembina County, North Dakota, United States.

Noun (2) capitalized: Cavalier

Cavalier (plural Cavaliers)

  1. (historical) A royalist partisan of Charles I of England during the English Civil War, especially from the upper classes.
    Synonyms:
    Royalist
  2. A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
  3. (automobiles) A Chevrolet Cavalier.

Also used as

cavalier is also the alternative letter-case form of Cavalier.

cavalier meaning in Tagalog and Arabic

cavalier in Tagalog

military man serving on horse
kabalyero

cavalier in Arabic

not caring enough about something important
غَيْر مُكْتَرِث ḡayr muktariṯ

Examples of cavalier in a sentence

  • That’s a good reminder of how they won the referendum: these cavalier romancers trounced the roundhead number-cruncher remainers.
  • “Are you a cavalier or a roundhead?”
  • This struck me as a rather cavalier attitude to truth, but hatred is not the midwife of caution or accuracy.

All 13 example sentences with cavalier

Synonyms of cavalier

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of cavalier

Forms of cavalier

Adjective
comparativemore cavalier
superlativemost cavalier
Noun
pluralcavaliers
pluralCavaliers
Verb
third-person singular presentcavaliers
present participlecavaliering
past participlecavaliered
pastcavaliered

Plural of cavalier: cavaliers

Origin of cavalier

First appears c. 1562 in a translation by Peter Whitehorne. Borrowed from Middle French cavalier (“horseman”), itself borrowed from Old Italian cavaliere (“mounted soldier, knight”), borrowed from Old Occitan cavalier, from Late Latin caballārius (“horseman”), from Latin caballus (“horse”), probably from Gaulish caballos 'nag', variant of cabillos (compare Welsh ceffyl, Breton kefel, Irish capall), akin to German (Swabish) Kōb 'nag' and Old Church Slavonic кобꙑла (kobyla) 'mare'. Previous English forms include cavalero and cavaliero. Doublet of caballero and chevalier.

Misspelling of Cavileer, after Charles Cavileer, an early settler.

From cavalier, q.v.

Words formed from cavalier

Phrases with cavalier

Words that rhyme with cavalier

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cavalier

What does cavalier mean?
Cavalier means lacking the proper care or concern for something important, reckless, rash, high-handed.
What is cavalier in Tagalog?
Cavalier in Tagalog is kabalyero. See Cavalier meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is cavalier?
Cavalier can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce cavalier?
Cavalier is pronounced /ˌkævəˈlɪɚ/.

Words near cavalier in the dictionary

  1. cavaleros
  2. cavalery
  3. cavaletti
  4. cavaletto
  5. cavalettos
  6. cavalier
  7. Cavalier County
  8. Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
  9. Cavalier King Charles Spaniels
  10. Cavaliere
  11. cavaliere servente

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cavalier (page history and authors); Cavalier (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-cavalier.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cavalier.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cavalier. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.