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Pronunciation varies by accent · noun
A group of particularly brutal mercenaries who were active in Africa and Asia during the 1960s..
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').
And when I signified my intention of making a tour of the whole province, they most earnestly advised me to alter my plans, and occupy my time in visiting some other part of the kingdom; for they assured me, that all travellers who attempted Basse Bretagne, returned in disgust before they went more thant a few stages into the country, for that its general aspect was that of desolation itself; the roads were impassable ; and the people dirty, ragged barbarians, living in filthy huts, and clothed in sheepskins; that, in short, everything was affreux.
It was in rain that some common friends represented the tort affreux — the frightful mischief he would do the government of his own creation, if he published this work — all in vain: his honor, his conscience, and his patriotism, required that he should raise his voice in defence of the charter, which the king and his ministers equally violate — and the work is published!
Use affreux when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Affreux means A group of particularly brutal mercenaries who were active in Africa and Asia during the 1960s..
The closest synonym depends on the sentence and intended sense.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
As one Belgian journalist wrote: The affreux ["frightful ones"] are outstanding in combat.
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