mot juste
(Redirected from juste mot)
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Unadapted borrowing from French mot juste.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]mot juste (plural mots justes)
- The perfectly appropriate word or phrase for the situation.
- Synonym: winged word
- 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter V:
- She legged it, and for a moment silence reigned. Then Bobbie said, “Phew!” and I agreed that “Phew!” was the mot juste.
- 2014 March 23, David Streitfeld, “Web Fiction, Serialized and Social”, in New York Times[1]:
- Wattpad is not the sort of site where writers talk about suffering for their art or spend hours searching for the mot juste.
Translations
[edit]perfectly appropriate word or phrase
French
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]mot juste m (plural mots justes)
Descendants
[edit]- → English: mot juste
See also
[edit]Categories:
- English terms borrowed from French
- English unadapted borrowings from French
- English terms derived from French
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/uːst
- Rhymes:English/uːst/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English multiword terms
- English terms with quotations
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French multiword terms
- French masculine nouns
- French idioms