Word.ws English Dictionary

bête rouge

bête rouge noun: a mite of the genus Trombidium.

bête rouge: a mite of the genus Trombidium
Image: Katja Schulz, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

bête rouge (plural bêtes rouges)

  1. A mite of the genus Trombidium.
    • He had picked up bêtes rouges in the bush and they were crawling and burrowing under his skin.1934, Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
    • ‘The rashes on his legs and arms are bêtes rouges, and we can get rid of them with ammonia and zinc ointment.’1994, Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Minerva, published 1995, page 137

Forms of bête rouge

pluralbêtes rouges

Origin of bête rouge

From French bête rouge (literally “red beast”).

Questions about bête rouge

What does bête rouge mean?
Bête rouge means a mite of the genus Trombidium.
What part of speech is bête rouge?
Bête rouge is a noun.
What is the plural of bête rouge?
The plural of bête rouge is bêtes rouges.

Words near bête rouge in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bête rouge (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: “bête rouge.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/b%C3%AAte_rouge. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.