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cavalier (noun) – 1. A gallant or chivalrous man, especially one serving as escort to a woman of high social position; a gentleman.
2. A mounted soldier; a knight.
3. A supporter of Charles I of England in his struggles against Parliament. Also called Royalist.

(adj) – 1. Showing arrogant or offhand disregard; dismissive.
2. Carefree and nonchalant; jaunty.
3. Of or relating to a group of 17th-century English poets associated with the court of Charles I.

Source : The Free Dictionary

Etymology : 1580s, “a horseman,” especially if armed, from Italian cavalliere “mounted soldier, knight; gentleman serving as a lady’s escort,” from Late Latin caballarius “horseman,” from Vulgar Latin *caballus, the common Vulgar Latin word for “horse” (and source of Italian cavallo, French cheval, Spanish caballo, Irish capall, Welsh ceffyl), displacing Latin equus (from PIE root *ekwo-).

In classical Latin caballus was “work horse, pack horse,” sometimes, disdainfully, “hack, nag.” This and Greek kaballion “workhorse,” kaballes “nag” probably are loan-words, perhaps from an Anatolian language. The same source is thought to have yielded Old Church Slavonic kobyla.

The sense was extended in Elizabethan English to “a knight; a courtly gentleman,” but also, pejoratively, “a swaggerer.” Meaning “Royalist, adherent of Charles I” is from 1641.

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