confirmed bachelor
- noun
- /kənˈfɜrmd ˈbætʃələr/
- Archaic
- If I wasn't a confirmed bachelor, I would have scooped one up myself.
Examples
-
A confirmed bachelor, he falls for Suzel, the charming daughter of his tenant farmer, and after some amusing twists and turns, the two eventually marry.
Academic text (2000) -
Countrymen in particular and confirmed bachelors would make the short trip to the kitchen to have their hats or caps inspected.
Fiction book (2001) -
A confirmed bachelor, he is.
-
You know I'm a confirmed bachelor.
Fiction book (1992) -
A confirmed bachelor.
Fiction book (1993) -
I'm a confirmed bachelor.
-
Aside from briefly sharing an apartment with Lilly Reich, after separating from his wife around 1921, he never again lived under the same roof with a female companion and remained, until death, a confirmed bachelor.
Fiction book (1992) -
The fact of the matter is there actually were homosexual people in the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries, and 99.9% of people with homosexual orientations lived as "straight" people, while the rest lived as "straight" confirmed bachelors.
Blog text (30) -
Despite his many achievements, he proudly identifies as a confirmed bachelor who prefers a life without marriage.
-
After years of enjoying his freedom, Mark remains a confirmed bachelor, content with his lifestyle choices.
Synonyms
A person who has a first university degree
A person who is not married or in a romantic relationship
A man who has never been married
Antonyms
How Committed
- Archaic
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'confirmed' (firmly established/unlikely to change) modifying 'bachelor' (an unmarried man), so a learner who knows both words can infer a man who chooses or habitually remains unmarried. There is no strong idiomatic shift or unpredictable metaphor, and similar modifier+noun constructions exist cross-linguistically, making the phrase immediately comprehensible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Confirmed bachelor uses confirmed in an old sense meaning 'firmly decided' and bachelor for a single man, so it creates the image of someone firmly set in that status. That's why the phrase means 'a man who has chosen to remain unmarried'.