Manqué is a term used in reference to a person who has failed to live up to a specific expectation or ambition. It is usually used in combination with a profession: for example, a career civil servant with political prowess who nonetheless never attained political office might be described as a "politician manqué". It can also be used relative to a specific role model; a second-rate method actor

Method Actor

Method Actor is an eponymous album released in 1988 featuring American singer Eva Cassidy. It was re-released on CD in 2002, six years after her death.- Track listing :# "Getting Out" – 4:19# "Look in to My Eyes" – 4:16...

 might be referred to as a "Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...

 manqué".

The term derives from the past participle of the French verb manquer ('to miss'). In English, it is used in the manner of a French adjective: postpositively (coming after the noun it is modifying instead of before).

The British political writer and former M.P.

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 David Marquand

David Marquand

David Ian Marquand FBA, FRHistS, FRSA is a British academic and former Labour Party Member of Parliament .Born in Cardiff, Marquand was educated at Emanuel School, Magdalen College, Oxford, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and at the University of California, Berkeley...

 has described the mid 20th century Labour politician Aneurin Bevan

Aneurin Bevan

Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...

 as a "statesman manqué", while the magazine Private Eye

Private Eye

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...

referred to journalist Janet Street-Porter

Janet Street-Porter

Janet Street-Porter is a British media personality, journalist and television presenter. She was editor for two years of The Independent on Sunday. She relinquished the job to become editor-at-large in 2002...

 as an "architect manquée" ("Impractical modernists ... are revered because people ... admire them uncritically").

The Collins Dictionary gave the example of a manager as an "actor manqué", while the Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases cited the Times magazine in 1996 as describing a "subway genius" as "a writer manqué since many of his chosen citations deal with creating literature". Arising from the inscription on Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's door in Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

, "let no one devoid of geometry

Geometry

Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....

 enter here" , the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...

 has been described as typifying a "mathematician manqué".

Manqué as failure

In French manqué is sometimes applied to someone who has failed to gain professional status - such as un médecin manqué (a failed doctor) - whereas, in English, it need not have that pejorative implication. In the game of roulette

Roulette

Roulette is a casino game named after a French diminutive for little wheel. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number or a range of numbers, the colors red or black, or whether the number is odd or even....

 the set of numbers from 1 to 18 is described as manque (no accent), meaning that the ball has "failed" to land in one of the higher (19-36) slots.

Manky

The slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

 manky, meaning "inferior" or "dirty", is thought to be linked in some way to manqué, possibly from the old Scottish

Scottish English

Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....

 word mank (maimed or defective) , but maybe via Polari

Polari

Polari is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, criminals, prostitutes, and by the gay subculture. It was popularised in the 1960s by camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne...

 , the camp

Camp (style)

Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...

 slang that came to the attention of a wider public in the 1960s through the radio show Round the Horne

Round the Horne

Round the Horne was a BBC Radio comedy programme, transmitted in four series of weekly episodes from 1965 until 1968. The series was created by Barry Took and Marty Feldman - with others contributing to later series after Feldman returned to performing — and starred Kenneth Horne, with Kenneth...

. The ancestor of all these words is the Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

mancus (maimed or crippled; and, by tranference, imperfect or incomplete ).