Débrouillard

In January 1886, the French publisher Édouard Charton devoted a short entry in Le Magasin pittoresque to a word that had only just begun to find its footing: débrouillard.

Charton understood its usefulness immediately. The word described a particular kind of person: resourceful, persistent, and able to find a way through difficulty.  He predicted that it would eventually find its place in the dictionary published by the Académie française, France’s authority on the French language. In time, it did.

Nearly a century and a half later, his description remains strikingly current:

“DÉBROUILLARD.

This word has barely entered common usage yet: it will get there, and one day it will have the honor of appearing in the Dictionary of the French Academy, because it has a clearly defined meaning and is useful. Littré, who introduced it in the supplement to his Dictionary, defines it as follows:

Débrouillard: one who easily finds a way through, who gets himself out of difficulty.

…

Fortunately, there is hardly a family, group, or company in which, in moments of trouble, a débrouillard cannot be found. One can have plenty of reason and common sense without possessing enough of this gift, which is so precious throughout the course of life.

The débrouillard knows no discouragement; he does not say: ‘There is nothing to be done. I do not know what will become of me.’

He refuses to let himself be defeated by difficulties; he does not collapse in on himself; he does not hesitate to set all the resources of his mind into motion. He searches with the conviction that he must find a way, that he will find a way.

He wills it, and he finds it.”

Source: Édouard Charton, “Débrouillard,” Le Magasin pittoresque, January 1886. Translated from the French.