Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use cavalier in a sentence

13 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Cavalier means lacking the proper care or concern for something important, reckless, rash, high-handed. Example: “He was really treating us in the most cavalier fashion.”

Examples of cavalier by meaning

adjectiveLacking the proper care or concern for something important, reckless, rash, high-handed.

  • He was really treating us in the most cavalier fashion.1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 144
  • For another example, see Palumbo, Rudd, and Whelan (2006), who found that several empirical consumption papers from the 1980s and 1990s took a cavalier approach to deflation and measurement that unfortunately affected their results.2024, Jeremy B. Rudd, A Practical Guide to Macroeconomics, page 60

nounSomeone with an uncircumcised penis.

  • The roundheads in the school showers easily equalled the cavaliers.1992, John Hoyland, Fathers and Sons, page 94
  • I knew about the English Civil War, Cavaliers (wrong but romantic) versus Roundheads (right but repulsive), but I didn't think that was what he was talking about.2013, Ellen Datlow, Hauntings, →ISBN, page 155

verbOf a man: to act in a gallant and dashing manner toward (women).

  • "I thought," Graeme burred at him, transfixing him with shrewd eyes, "that you were cavaliering the Italian girl, Beatrice Cenci or Vittoria Colonna or whatever her name is?"1916, Good Housekeeping, volume 64, page 113

More sentences with cavalier

  • That’s a good reminder of how they won the referendum: these cavalier romancers trounced the roundhead number-cruncher remainers.2025 December 9, Polly Toynbee, “Come with me to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s house. The Brexiters are rattled – and it shows”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry romancer
  • “Are you a cavalier or a roundhead?”2013, Ellen Datlow, Hauntings, →ISBN, page 155. From the entry roundhead
  • This struck me as a rather cavalier attitude to truth, but hatred is not the midwife of caution or accuracy.2012, Theodore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World. From the entry midwife
  • Here the princely hero is a nondancing cavalier amid the many swan-maidens who resemble the one with whom he is falling in love.2009 May 20, Alastair Macaulay, “A Season Opener Includes an Obama in the House”, in New York Times. From the entry nondancing
  • Addressing this cavalier Western attitude, Dr.1999, Culture Wars - Volume 19, page 36. From the entry nut-head
  • In Night Song, Cara Henson, the teacher, becomes pregnant in her romantic relationship with Chase Jefferson, a cavalier soldier, but refuses to tell him about her parturiency.2004, Rita B. Dandridge, Black Women's Activism, page 8. From the entry parturiency
  • As collaborators (known as “tropers”) at TVtropes.org have written, “It’s not entirely clear how sentient she is, but the Scoobies seem a little unnervingly cavalier about how they treat her.”[2023, Madeline Muntersbjorn, “Dismembering (the) Buffybot”, in Alyson R. Buckman, Juliette C. Kitchens, Katherine A. Troyer, editors…. From the entry troper
  • But then, I am not someone who can just order drink after drink at the Hotel Gansevoort with cavalier joy and talk about how fun it is to be tricoastal.2007 June 14, Mike Albo, “If You Really Need the Big Price Tag”, in New York Times. From the entry tricoastal

Meaning of cavalier

  1. adjective Lacking the proper care or concern for something important, reckless, rash, high-handed.
  2. adjective High-spirited.
  3. adjective Supercilious.

Full definition of cavalier

Questions about cavalier in a sentence

How do you use cavalier in a sentence?
Cavalier is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “He was really treating us in the most cavalier fashion.”
What is a short sentence with cavalier?
“Addressing this cavalier Western attitude, Dr.”
What does cavalier mean?
Cavalier means lacking the proper care or concern for something important, reckless, rash, high-handed.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cavalier (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use cavalier in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/cavalier. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.