LIBERTINE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does libertine mean? 

• LIBERTINE (noun)
  The noun LIBERTINE has 1 sense:

1. a dissolute person; usually a man who is morally unrestrained

  Familiarity information: LIBERTINE used as a noun is very rare.

• LIBERTINE (adjective)
  The adjective LIBERTINE has 1 sense:

1. unrestrained by convention or morality

  Familiarity information: LIBERTINE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LIBERTINE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A dissolute person; usually a man who is morally unrestrained

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

debauchee; libertine; rounder

Hypernyms ("libertine" is a kind of...):

bad person (a person who does harm to others)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "libertine"):

adulterer; fornicator (someone who commits adultery or fornication)

gigolo (a man who has sex with and is supported by a woman)

blood; profligate; rake; rakehell; rip; roue (a dissolute man in fashionable society)

ladies' man; lady killer; seducer (a man who takes advantage of women)

swinger; tramp (a person who engages freely in promiscuous sex)

debaucher; ravisher; violator (someone who assaults others sexually)

philanderer; womaniser; womanizer (a man who likes many women and has short sexual relationships with them)

Derivation:

libertine (unrestrained by convention or morality)

• LIBERTINE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Unrestrained by convention or morality

Synonyms:

debauched; degenerate; degraded; dissipated; dissolute; fast; libertine; profligate; riotous

Context example:

fast women

Similar:

immoral (deliberately violating accepted principles of right and wrong)

Derivation:

libertine (a dissolute person; usually a man who is morally unrestrained)

 Context examples 

Happy with a man of libertine practices!

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too strict for the corrupt and libertine manners of a court: and we often find by experience, that young men are too opinionated and volatile to be guided by the sober dictates of their seniors.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

What could I think—what DID I think—but that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you (having the fancy) for your own good?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In an age when the Premier was a heavy drinker, the Leader of the Opposition a libertine, and the Prince of Wales a combination of the two, it was hard to know where to look for a man whose private and public characters were equally lofty.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge—that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, SHE must be a saint.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)