Word.ws English Dictionary

sans gêne

sans gêne noun: lack of constraint; brazenness; unreservedness (unabashed behavior, disregard for societal constraints).

Noun

sans gêne (uncountable)

  1. Lack of constraint; brazenness; unreservedness (unabashed behavior, disregard for societal constraints)
    • The rogue, like the artist and perhaps the gentleman, belongs to no class. He is not embarrassed by the sans gene of the hobo, nor put out of countenance by the etiquette of the prince.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 46”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC

Adjective

sans gêne (not comparable)

  1. Without constraint, unembarrassed.
    • Loolowcan was evidently at home among these compatriots, frowzier even than he. He squatted among them, sans gêne, and lighted his pipe. One of the ladies did the honors, and motioned me to a seat upon a rusty bear-skin.1853, Theodore Winthrop, The Canoe and the Saddle, chapter X

Forms of sans gêne

alternative formsans-gene
alternative formsans gene
alternative formsans-gêne

Origin of sans gêne

Borrowed from French sans gêne.

Questions about sans gêne

What does sans gêne mean?
Sans gêne means lack of constraint; brazenness; unreservedness (unabashed behavior, disregard for societal constraints).
What part of speech is sans gêne?
Sans gêne can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near sans gêne in the dictionary

  1. Sanremo
  2. Sanroman
  3. Sanromans
  4. sans
  5. sans doute
  6. sans gêne
  7. sans nombre
  8. sans rival
  9. sans rivals
  10. sans serif
  11. sans serifs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sans gêne (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: “sans gêne.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sans_g%C3%AAne. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.