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bête noire

noun
/bɛt ˈnwɑː/UK/bɛt ˈnwɑɹ/US

Etymology

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

Definitions

  1. Someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked

    Someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked; the bane of someone's existence; an object of aversion; an anathema.

    • [A] petticoated politician was [Napoleon] Bonaparte's bête noire, or antipathy, […]
    • […] 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.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for bête noire. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA