Word.ws English Dictionary

ci-devant

ci-devant adjective: former, late.

Adjective

ci-devant (not comparable)

  1. Former, late.
    • Hastily Beatrice performed both her own and Emily's toilette; for what with fatigue and terror, her companion was almost powerless: still their celerity excited the praise of the ci-devant professor of the fine arts.1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 262
    • The ci-devant marquis was caught disguised in her apartment. She betrayed for him a good, easy friend of the people who had long loved her, and revenge is sweet.1846, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], Lucretia: Or The Children of Night. […], volume I, London: Saunders and Otley, […], →OCLC

ci-devant meaning in Tamil

ci-devant in Tamil

முன் வழக்காற்றின்படியான

Examples of ci-devant in a sentence

  • Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the ci-devant blacksmith1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, (please...
  • The old patrician retreated noiselessly with a slow bow that was part of the ceremonious legacy left by a ci-devant aristocracy of the last century’s better days.1952, Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), part I: “The General”, chapter 1: ‘Search for Magicians’...
  • During art collecting tours in Italy, Townley worked with the eccentric scholar Baron d'Hancarville (ci-devant Pierre Françoise Hughes), a specialist in pornographic art […]2006, Marsha Keith Schuchard, Why Mrs Blake Cried, Pimlico, published 2007, page 157:

Origin of ci-devant

Borrowed from French ci-devant.

Questions about ci-devant

What does ci-devant mean?
Ci-devant means former, late.
What is ci-devant in Tamil?
Ci-devant in Tamil is முன் வழக்காற்றின்படியான. See Ci-devant meaning in Tamil.
How do you use ci-devant in a sentence?
Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the ci-devant blacksmith
What part of speech is ci-devant?
Ci-devant is an adjective.

Words near ci-devant in the dictionary

  1. Chʼortiʼ
  2. Ch’eng-pei
  3. ci
  4. cI protein
  5. cI proteins
  6. ci-devant
  7. CI/CD
  8. cia
  9. Cia-Cia
  10. CIAAW
  11. ciabatta

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ci-devant (page history and authors); ci-devant (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “ci-devant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ci-devant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.