merveilleuse

Noun (1)

merveilleuse (plural merveilleuses)

1. (historical) A female merveilleux.
   • The ‘merveilleuse’ of the Directory in France. The ‘merveilleuse’, or ‘ultra-fashionable’, as the writer..rather inadequately translates her title, ‘walked..half naked in the Champs Elysees’.1892 October 19, The Daily News, page 5/1
   • The Merveilleuses survived the Incroyables by a couple of years.1898, Octave Uzanne, chapter I, in Mary Loyd, transl., Fashion in Paris: The Various Phases of Feminine Taste and Æsthetics from 1797 to 1897, page 19

Noun (2) capitalized: Merveilleuse

IPA/mɜːveɪˈjɜːz/

Merveilleuse (plural Merveilleuses)

1. (historical) A fashionable young Frenchwoman of the late 18th-century, characterized by extravagant dress sense and anti-revolutionary ideas.
   • There were the mad fashions sported by the extraordinarily (by turns over- and under-) dressed Incroyables and Merveilleuses, the guzzling of champagne, and the ingestion of bountiful meals in smart restaurants (a recent invention).2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 542
   • You are the reason I arrived indecently late at Madame de Volanges's and had all the old ladies thinking I was a Merveilleuse.2007, Helen Constantine, translating Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons (1782), Penguin 2007, p. 111