belle laide
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From French, belle (“beautiful woman”) + laide (“ugly”).
Noun[edit]
belle laide (plural belles laides)
- A woman who is attractive despite not being conventionally beautiful.
- 1979, Peter Drucker, The Man Who Invented Kissinger, John Wiley, published 1997, page 143:
- Perhaps her looks were not considered downright repulsive. But she was not even what in those years was called une belle laide, being neither feminine, nor soft, nor submissive.