Word.ws English Dictionary

valet-de-place

valet-de-place noun: in France, a person who offered his services as a guide, messenger, etc. for hire, especially to strangers.

Noun

valet-de-place (plural valets-de-place)

  1. (historical) In France, a person who offered his services as a guide, messenger, etc. for hire, especially to strangers.
    • I therefore added to my own English servants […] a Frenchman, who had formerly served me as valet de place, and of whom I had a very good opinion.1792, Charlotte Smith, Desmond, Broadview, published 2001, page 383

Forms of valet-de-place

pluralvalets-de-place

Origin of valet-de-place

Borrowed from French [Term?].

Questions about valet-de-place

What does valet-de-place mean?
Valet-de-place means in France, a person who offered his services as a guide, messenger, etc. for hire, especially to strangers.
What part of speech is valet-de-place?
Valet-de-place is a noun.
What is the plural of valet-de-place?
The plural of valet-de-place is valets-de-place.

Words near valet-de-place in the dictionary

  1. vales of tears
  2. valet
  3. valet de chambre
  4. valet parking
  5. valet-de-chambre
  6. valet-de-place
  7. valeta
  8. valetage
  9. valetas
  10. valetdom
  11. valeted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: valet-de-place (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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