bête noire
/bɛt ˈnwɑɹ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.80 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
1
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked; the bane of someone's existence; an object of aversion; an anathema.
Example Sentences
- "[A] petticoated politician was [Napoleon] Bonaparte's bête noire, or antipathy, […]"
- "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."
- "[…] 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."
- "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!"
- "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."
- "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."
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French bête noire (“(figurative) intolerable person”, literally “black beast”).
Word Breakdown
- Root: *negʷ-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /bɛt ˈnwɑɹ/
- British English: /bɛt ˈnwɑː/