Trending: ‘cavalier’

Cavalier rode to the top of our lookups on May 12th, 2020, after Dr. Anthony Fauci used the word in testimony before the U. S. Senate.

Wow. Quite an exchange.

GOP Sen Rand Paul suggested kids suffering less from coronavirus means schools can reopen.

Dr. Fauci responded by saying, "I think we've got to be careful if we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects."

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) May 12, 2020

We have a number of definitions for the adjectival cavalier; the one most likely to have been intended by Dr. Fauci is “marked by or given to offhand and often disdainful dismissal of important matters.” Other senses include “debonair,” “aristocratic,” and “of or relating to the English Cavalier poets of the mid-17th century.”

The second person named as informer is Captain John Titus, a man of so vicious a life in his Cavalier way, for whoring, drinking, swearing, and for-swearing, as the world hath scarce his fellow, whose several perjuries upon Judicial Records in England, are said by some of his own kindred not to be a few.
— Anon., A conference with the souldiers, 1653