Word.ws English Dictionary

debonaire

debonaire is the alternative spelling of debonair.

Meaning of debonair

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)
  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

See all 4 meanings of debonair

Forms of debonaire

comparativemore debonaire
superlativemost debonaire

Questions about debonaire

What is debonaire the alternative spelling of?
Debonaire is the alternative spelling of debonair.

Words near debonaire in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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