Jump to content

longueur

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

[edit]

Etymology

[edit]

Borrowed from French longueur (literally “length”).

Pronunciation

[edit]

Noun

[edit]

longueur (plural longueurs)

  1. (authorship) A lengthy passage in a dramatic or literary work, especially a dull or tedious one; a period of boredom.
    • 1998 August 17, Adam Gopnik, “Man Goes To See a Doctor”, in The New Yorker‎[1]:
      Most of the reasons given for its disappearance make sense: people are happier, busier; the work done by the anti-Freudian skeptics has finally taken hold of the popular imagination, so that people have no time for analytic longueurs and no patience with its mystifications.
    • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 30:
      He cultivated the aura, if not quite of the Anti-Christ, at least of an Anti-Sun King, discountenancing his uncle and shocking the dévots by preferring the intimacy and informality of a clique of drinking companions to the formal longueurs of the courtly round […] .
    • 2015 October 5, Michiko Kakutani, “Review: ‘City on Fire,’ Garth Risk Hallberg’s Novel of New York in the Bad Old Days”, in New York Times‎[2]:
      [T]he reader can’t help feeling that a few judicious nips and tucks might have dispersed the longueurs that waft around the third quarter of the book.
    • 2024 April 22, Adrian Searle, “Venice Biennale 2024 review – everything everywhere all at once”, in The Guardian‎[3], →ISSN:
      Claire Fontaine (who are actually a duo) have queered the phrase, lending its pungency and ambiguity to a biennale that I wish were nearly so succinct. There are longueurs. There are detours and incomprehensible delays.

French

[edit]

Etymology

[edit]

From long +‎ -eur.

Pronunciation

[edit]
  • IPA(key): /lɔ̃.ɡœʁ/
  • Audio:(file)

Noun

[edit]

longueur f (plural longueurs)

  1. length
[edit]

Further reading

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=longueur&oldid=79578315"