Word.ws English Dictionary

bête noire

/bɛt ˈnwɑː/US/bɛt ˈnwɑɹ/

bête noire 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.

Noun

bête noire (plural bêtes noires)

  1. 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, […]1833 October, “Art. V.—Mémoires de Madame la Duchesse d’Abrantes, ou Souvenirs Historiques sur Napoleon, la Revolution, le Directoire, le Consulat, l’Empire, et la Restauration. Tom. VII.—XII. 8vo....
    • 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...1836 September, “Art. VIII.—1. A Letter to a Noble Lord on the Causes which have Produced the Present Reaction; with Remarks on Lord John Russell’s Letter to the Electors of the City of London. By...
    Synonyms:
    antipathy, bugbear

bête noire meaning in Persian

bête noire in Persian

someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked
موی دماغ, ادم مزاحم و غیر قابل تحمل

Examples of bête noire in a sentence

  • Life is easy for people who have just one bête noire and a trusty silver bullet.1997 November 10, Bob Metcalfe, “TRUSTe Uses Consents and Disclosures to Protect Privacy on the Internet”, in Sandy Reed, editor...
  • 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.2006, Andy McDermott, chapter 9, in Final Destination: Death of the Senses, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire: Black Flame, →ISBN, page 288:
  • And so, at its lowest ebb, [Boris] Johnson's wretched government has decided to play to the gallery, and generate some plastic animosity towards the bête noire of the liberal elite.2022 January 24, Tim Black, “The UK Must Stop Meddling in Ukraine: Boris Johnson’s Sabre-rattling is Both Desperate and Dangerous”, in Tom...

Synonyms of bête noire

Forms of bête noire

pluralbêtes noires

Origin of bête noire

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

Words that rhyme with bête noire

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bête noire

What does bête noire mean?
Bête noire means someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked; the bane of someone's existence; an object of aversion; an anathema.
What is bête noire in Persian?
Bête noire in Persian is موی دماغ, ادم مزاحم و غیر قابل تحمل. See Bête noire meaning in Persian.
How do you use bête noire in a sentence?
Life is easy for people who have just one bête noire and a trusty silver bullet.
What part of speech is bête noire?
Bête noire is a noun.
How do you pronounce bête noire?
Bête noire is pronounced /bɛt ˈnwɑː/ (UK).
What is the plural of bête noire?
The plural of bête noire is bêtes noires.

Words near bête noire in the dictionary

  1. Bézout's theorem
  2. bêche de mer
  3. bêche-de-mer
  4. bêches-de-mer
  5. bête noir
  6. bête noire
  7. bête rouge
  8. bêtes noires
  9. bêtes rouges
  10. bêtise
  11. bêtises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bête noire (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bête noire.wav.

Cite this entry: “bête noire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/b%C3%AAte_noire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.