cavalier

adjective

1. 1

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

   But, on the following day, no sign of Poirot. I was getting angry. He was really treating us in the most cavalier fashion.

   Such a cavalier attitude might seem to suggest that doctors consider the uterus as dispensable an organ as, say, an appendix—and some feminists have accused the medical profession of just such callousness […]

   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.

2. 2

   High-spirited.

3. 3

   Supercilious.

4. 4

   obsoleteFree and easy; unconcerned with formalities

5. 5

   historicalOf or pertaining to the party of King Charles I of England (1600–1649).

noun

1. 1

   historicalA military man serving on horse, (chiefly) early modern cavalry officers who had abandoned the heavy armor of medieval knights.

2. 2

   historicalA gallant: a sprightly young dashing military man.

3. 3

   historicalA gentleman of the class of such officers.

4. 4

   slangSomeone with an uncircumcised penis.

   The roundheads in the school showers easily equalled the cavaliers.

   Since penile preference is so tied up with personal aesthetics and body image, it seems both logical and fair to leave the choice of cavalier or roundhead to the owner of the organ, thus avoiding the sort of life-long pain expressed in a comment like this:[…]

   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. I shook my head. “It means our willies aren't circumcised,” he explained. "Are you a cavalier or a roundhead?”

5. 5

   A defensive work rising from a bastion, etc., and overlooking the surrounding area.

6. 6

   Variant of CavalierhistoricalAlternative letter-case form of Cavalier, a royalist partisan of Charles I of England during the English Civil War, especially from the upper classes.

verb

1. 1

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

   His social and kind nature is inferred from his cavaliering the ladies Percy and Mortimer, and introducing them, before their husbands depart for the war.

   "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?"

Forms

plural

cavaliers

comparative

more cavalier

superlative

most cavalier

past tense

cavaliered

past participle

cavaliered

present participle

cavaliering

third person singular

cavaliers