Word.ws English Dictionary

debonair

/ˌdɛbəˈneə(ɹ)/US/ˌdɛbəˈnɛɹ/

debonair adjective: gracious, courteous.

Adjective

debonair (comparative more debonair, superlative most debonair)

  1. (obsolete) Gracious, courteous.
    • Let be that Ladie debonaire, / Thou recreant knight, and soone thy selfe prepaire / To battell […].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  2. Suave, urbane and sophisticated.
    • “He's doing it wrong! I am much more suave, debonair, and sophisticated than that!” “Yes, Dan, that's a very debonair stain you have on your shirt.” “I'll have you know I have sophistication coming out the wazoo!”2011 January 15, Dan Mandel & Chris Pearson, “The Ninja” (10:11 from the start), in Dan Vs., season 1, episode 4, spoken by Dan (Curtis Armstrong)
    • She was a New York City person. Sacco is nervy and sassy and sort of debonair.2015 February 12, Jon Ronson, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  3. (especially) Charming, confident, and carefully dressed.
    • The hard launch of what appeared to be the hottest new relationship in town – Billanna? Winty? – at the 2023 Met Gala saw Vogue supremo Wintour, who has hosted the Met Gala for 30 years, walk the red carpet arm in arm with the dashing and debonair Love Actually star, a man Clive James named “the...2023 May 2, Samuel Fishwick, “The ‘secret romance’ that got everybody talking at the Met Gala”, in The Independent

Noun

debonair

  1. (obsolete) Debonaire behaviour; graciousness.
    • But yet, shall my vanity extend only to personals, such as the gracefulness of dress, my debonnaire, and my assurance—Self-taught, self-acquired, these!1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter XXXI”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume I, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a]nd sold by A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, page 196

debonair meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

debonair in Urdu

خوش اخلاق, شائستہ

debonair in Bengali

ভদ্র ও আত্মবিশ্বাসী

debonair in Malayalam

sophisticated, suave, urbane
നല്ല പെരുമാറ്റരീതിയുള്ള, മര്യാദയുള്ള, പരിഷ്കൃതമായ, സംസ്കാരമുള്ള, നാഗരികമായ, ലോകപരിചയമുള്ളവരുമായി ഇടപഴകുന്ന

debonair in Kannada

ಉಲ್ಲಾಸದ, ಹಸನ್ಮುಖದ, ಸರಸ ಸ್ವಭಾವದ, ಒಳ್ಳೆ ಉಡುಪು ತೊಟ್ಟ, ನಿಸ್ಸಂಕೋಚದ, ನಿರಾತಂಕ

Forms of debonair

comparativemore debonair
superlativemost debonair
alternative formdebonaire
alternative formdebonnaire
alternative formdébonnaire

Origin of debonair

Via Middle English debonaire from Old French de bon aire (“of good stock; noble”).

Words formed from debonair

Questions about debonair

What does debonair mean?
Debonair means gracious, courteous.
What is debonair in Urdu?
Debonair in Urdu is خوش اخلاق, شائستہ. See Debonair meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is debonair?
Debonair can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce debonair?
Debonair is pronounced /ˌdɛbəˈneə(ɹ)/ (UK).

Words near debonair in the dictionary

  1. deboistness
  2. Debold
  3. Debolds
  4. debole
  5. deboles
  6. debonair
  7. debonaire
  8. debonairity
  9. debonairly
  10. debonairness
  11. debond

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: debonair (page history and authors); debonair (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Debonair (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); debonair (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); debonair (Kannada 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-debonair.wav.

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