Word.ws English Dictionary

arrière-pensée

arrière-pensée noun: a mental reservation or ulterior motive.

Noun

arrière-pensée (plural arrière-pensées or (proscribed) arrières-pensées)

  1. A mental reservation or ulterior motive.
    • He knew that I had guessed his arrière-pensée, but he let me off for the moment, for which I was thankful; either because he was still ashamed of it, or because he supposed I was reserving myself for the catastrophe,—should it occur.1884, Henry James, “The Path of Duty”, in The English Illustrated Magazine, 2(15): 240-256

Forms of arrière-pensée

pluralarrière-pensées
plural proscribedarrières-pensées

Origin of arrière-pensée

Borrowed from French arrière-pensée.

Questions about arrière-pensée

What does arrière-pensée mean?
Arrière-pensée means a mental reservation or ulterior motive.
What part of speech is arrière-pensée?
Arrière-pensée is a noun.
What is the plural of arrière-pensée?
The plural of arrière-pensée is arrière-pensées.

Words near arrière-pensée in the dictionary

  1. Arrizon
  2. Arrizons
  3. arrière
  4. arrière-garde
  5. arrière-gardes
  6. arrière-pensée
  7. arrière-pensées
  8. arrière-voussure
  9. arrière-voussures
  10. arrièrepensée
  11. arrières-pensées

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: arrière-pensée (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “arrière-pensée.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/arri%C3%A8re-pens%C3%A9e. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.