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The term ne'er-do-well was used in the nineteenth-century Australasian colonies to denote young British and Irish men seen as undesirable. These men were typically thought to be the younger sons of wealthy families who had somehow failed to fulfil their potential, so they were sent to the colonies to 'improve' themselves.
A ne'er-do-well is a good-for-nothing person. Ne'er-do-well may also refer to: The Ne'er-do-Weel, an 1878 play by W. S. Gilbert, revived soon afterwards as The Vagabond; The Ne'er-Do-Well, a 1911 novel by Rex Beach, adapted for film several times in the silent era; The Ne'er-Do-Well, a 1916 American silent adventure crime drama film
The following conventions are used: Cognates are in general given in the oldest well-documented language of each family, although forms in modern languages are given for families in which the older stages of the languages are poorly documented or do not differ significantly from the modern languages.
The slang term "Chad" originated in the UK during World War II and was employed in a similar humorous manner as Kilroy was here. [1] It later came into use in Chicago [2] as a derogatory way to describe a young, wealthy man from the city's northern suburbs, typically single and in his twenties or early thirties. [2]
Yet, in the children of Buddenbrook Jr., the materially comfortable style of life provided by the dedication to solid, middle-class values elicits decadence: The fickle daughter, Toni, lacks and does not seek a purpose in life; son Christian is honestly decadent, and lives the life of a ne'er-do-well; and the businessman son, Thomas, who ...
The drunken young man alarming the miser there is probably his son, taking up a literary theme to be found, among other places, in Allan Ramsay's comic monologue. It will be remembered too that the thriftless ne'er-do-well of A Rake's Progress inherited his money from a miserly father.
Aladdin is an impoverished young ne'er-do-well, dwelling in "one of the cities of Ancient China." He is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb, who passes himself off as the brother of Aladdin's late father, Mustapha the tailor, convincing Aladdin and his mother of his good will by pretending to set up the lad as a wealthy merchant.
ne plus ultra: nothing more beyond: Also nec plus ultra or non plus ultra. A descriptive phrase meaning the most extreme point, or the best form, of something. Most notably the Pillars of Hercules were in the geographic sense the nec plus ultra of the ancient Mediterranean world, before the discovery of the Americas.