"... an old roue who was recovering from a lifetime of excesses..."
Word of the Day for Thursday, September 13, 2007
roue \roo-AY\, noun:
A man devoted to a life of sensual pleasure; a debauchee; a rake.
I spent some time with Desmond, an old roue who was recovering from a lifetime of excesses in a village near Fontainebleau.
-- Roger Scruton, "Purely medicinal", New Statesman, October 15, 2001
She caught the eye of New York aristocrat Gouverneur Morris, ex-U.S. Minister to France, a one-legged cosmopolitan roue. (Rumor had it that a jealous husband had shot Morris's leg off.)
-- Bill Kauffman, "Unwise Passions", American Enterprise, January 2001
Yet he acted the roue to the end, carrying on an intimate liaison with a girl who worked at the asylum -- he was 74, she was 17.
-- Rex Roberts, "Write Stuff", Insight on the News, December 11, 2000
Roue comes from French, from the past participle of rouer, "to break upon the wheel" (from the feeling that a roue deserves such a punishment), ultimately from Latin rota, "wheel."