Word.ws English Dictionary

bêtes noires

bêtes noires is the plural of bête noire.

Meaning of bête noire

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....
    Synonyms:
    antipathy, bugbear

Questions about bêtes noires

What is bêtes noires the plural of?
Bêtes noires is the plural of bête noire.

Words near bêtes noires in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bêtes noires (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “bêtes noires.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/b%C3%AAtes_noires. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.