Meaning of affreux | Babel Free

Definitions

A group of particularly brutal mercenaries who were active in Africa and Asia during the 1960s.

plural, plural-only

Equivalents

Examples

“As one Belgian journalist wrote: The affreux ["frightful ones"] are outstanding in combat.”

“I could no longer find anything affected in that long smooth white face but an extreme kindness and a sort of obstinate candour; Vian was as Herv in his detestation of the affreux [the frightful ones] as in loving what he loved.”

“These were mostly, but not exclusively, members of the Baluba tribe and had fled the persecution of Munongo's mercenary affreux and their black rank-and-file.”

“It takes a rather wilful ignorance to refuse to recognize the essential difference between, say, the affreux of mid-twentieth-century Africa and the Royal Gurkha Rifles, though both could loosely be described as mercenaries.”

“He had once been one of the dreaded affreux, the “frightful ones,” the white freelance soldiers who helped keep dictators in power throughout Africa and Asia.”

“France's return to Comoros was, above all, conspicuous through the actions of the mercenary leader Bob Denard and his team of affreux ('dreadful').”

CEFR level