à contrecœur
/ˌɑ ˌkɑn.tɹəˈkɚ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adv
Reluctantly, unwillingly, with disgust.
Example Sentences
- "Xtien was young at the time and had met him after her father's death, didn't know then what she knows now, and when the man died there she was alone with her child – forsaken, without a penny. À contrecœur went on the streets, became ill, was taken to hospital, in all sorts of trouble …"
- "Œdipe is another matter: he can't simply be ejected from the plot. So Dircé in the end has to take back everything she had said earlier about Œdipe's tyrannical behaviour and claims that she had said it à contrecœur anyway."
- "This is not to say, of course, that countries would be prevented from adopting common initiatives in these areas. But no longer would sceptical states be dragged à contrecœur into policies that their people disliked. The more federally minded governments would be free to use EU structures and institutions to amalgamate to their hearts’ content, with no pressure on the more reluctant nations to join them."
- "Following the award of the Nobel Prize, [Samuel] Beckett was pressured to make a new work available for publication. Finally, and almost à contrecoeur, he turned over to Les Editions de Minuit a story—"Premier Amour"—which he had written in 1946 but had withheld from publication."
Etymology
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: à contrecœur, avoir a contrecuer
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌɑ ˌkɑn.tɹəˈkɚ/
- British English: /ˌæ ˌkɒn.tɹəˈkɜː/