flambeau

Borrowed from French flambeau.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈflambəʊ/, /flamˈbəʊ/

flambeau (plural flambeaus or flambeaux)

1. A burning torch, especially one carried in procession.
   • 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number):

     Saint-Antoine has its cannon pointed (full of grapeshot); thrice applies the lit flambeau; which thrice refuses to catch,—the touchholes are so wetted....

   • 1865, Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, in Sequel to Drum-Taps: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d and other poems:

     […] With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, / With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, […]

   • 1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XIV, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, pages 131–132:

     There were flambeaux on staggering poles every ten strides or so, and at intervals of about a hundred strides, bartizans whose guardroom windows glared like fireworks clung to the bridge piers.

   • 1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 955:

     She walked quietly with apparent composure and lowered head but her pallor betrayed her mortal fear – her skin glowed almost nacrous in the warm rose of the flambeaux.

• flambé
• flamboyant

From flambe +‎ -eau.

flambeau m (plural flambeaux)

1. torch
2. candle
3. candlestick
4. (metonymically) light, flame as symbolic spirit of something

• course aux flambeaux
• passer le flambeau
• reprendre le flambeau
• retraite aux flambeaux

• → Dutch: flambouw
• → Spanish: flambó

• Nouveau Petit Larousse illustré. Dictionnaire encyclopédique. Paris, Librairie Larousse, 1952, 146th edition
• “flambeau”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.