bête noire

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English[edit]

WOTD – 18 April 2024

Etymology[edit]

Unadapted borrowing from French bête noire (“(figurative) intolerable person”, literally “black beast”).[1][2]

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

bête noire (plural bêtes noires)

  1. Someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked; the bane of someone's existence; an object of aversion; an anathema.
    Synonym: bugbear
    • 1833 October, “Art. V.—Mémoires de Madame la Duchesse d’Abrantes, ou Souvenirs Historiques sur Napoleon, la Revolution, le Directoire, le Consulat, l’Empire, et la Restauration. Tom. VII.—XII. 8vo. Paris. 1833. [book review]”, in The Foreign Quarterly Review, volume XII, number XXIV, London: Treuttel and Würtz, and Richter, […]; Black, Young, and Young, […], →OCLC, page 390:
      [A] petticoated politician was [Napoleon] Bonaparte's bête noire, or antipathy, […]
    • 1836 September, “Art. VIII.—1. A Letter to a Noble Lord on the Causes which have Produced the Present Reaction; with Remarks on Lord John Russell’s Letter to the Electors of the City of London. By Walker Skirrow, Esq. London. 1841 [...] [book review]”, in John Taylor Coleridge, editor, The Quarterly Review, volume LXVIII, number CXXXVI, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 504:
      No reader can be ignorant that for many years past the bêtes noires of the Whigs and Radicals were what they delighted to call ‘political parsons.’ If the clergyman was a magistrate, he was libelled as a political parson; if he presided at a vestry that levied a church-rate, he was persecuted as a political parson.
    • 1844 January–December, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “I Provide Nobly for My Family and Attain the Height of My (Seeming) Good Fortune”, in “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. [The Luck of Barry Lyndon.]”, in Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, volume III, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1856, →OCLC, page 216:
      […] I found at length that the widow was growing dreadfully afraid of me, calling me her bête noire, her dark spirit, her murderous adorer, and a thousand other names indicative of her extreme disquietude and terror.
    • 1854, Margaret Maria Brewster, “Young Ladies’ Work”, in Work: Or Plenty to Do and How to Do It ([2nd series]), Edinburgh: Thomas Constable & Co.; London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., →OCLC, page 22:
      Unruly dogs and cows are the bêtes noires of her morning walks,—wasps and earwigs haunt her retirement,—and ghosts and burglaries mar her midnight peace!
    • 1997 November 10, Bob Metcalfe, “TRUSTe Uses Consents and Disclosures to Protect Privacy on the Internet”, in Sandy Reed, editor, InfoWorld, volume 19, number 45, San Mateo, Calif.: InfoWorld Publishing Co., International Data Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 159, column 1:
      Life is easy for people who have just one bête noire and a trusty silver bullet. There are, for example, people whose bête noire is censorship and whose silver bullet is the First Amendment. […] And there are many whose life is all about this week's subject—privacy—as if nothing else matters. Problem is that privacy conflicts with other important rights, such as freedom of speech.
    • 2006, Andy McDermott, chapter 9, in Final Destination: Death of the Senses, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire: Black Flame, →ISBN, page 288:
      The CD was leaning against the side of the right-hand shelf unit, so to get a firm grip with a fingertip, he was going to have to use his left hand. It went against every instinct he had about getting greasy fingermarks on CDs, a personal bête noire, but on this occasion he was just going to have to put up with it.
    • 2022 January 24, Tim Black, “The UK Must Stop Meddling in Ukraine: Boris Johnson’s Sabre-rattling is Both Desperate and Dangerous”, in Tom Slater, editor, Spiked‎[1], London: Spiked Ltd., archived from the original on 2023-09-25:
      The government knows that the liberal broadsheet press is shot through with anti-Putin, borderline Russophobic prejudice. Indeed, many commentators still blame Russia for Brexit. And so, at its lowest ebb, [Boris] Johnson's wretched government has decided to play to the gallery, and generate some plastic animosity towards the bête noire of the liberal elite.

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ “bête noire, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2023.
  2. ^ “bête noire, n.”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from Stuart Berg Flexner, editor in chief, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1993, →ISBN.

Further reading[edit]

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Literally, “black beast”. This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

bête noire f (plural bêtes noires)

  1. bête noire, pet hate, pet peeve
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