Word.ws English Dictionary

belle dame sans merci

belle dame sans merci noun: a beautiful woman who seduces a man and then consigns him to an unpleasant fate.

Noun

belle dame sans merci (plural belles dames sans merci)

  1. A beautiful woman who seduces a man and then consigns him to an unpleasant fate.

Forms of belle dame sans merci

pluralbelles dames sans merci

Origin of belle dame sans merci

From French belle dame sans merci (literally “beautiful woman without mercy”). La Belle Dame sans Merci is the title of a ballad produced by the English poet John Keats in 1819; this was derived from the title of a 15th-century poem by Alain Chartier, La Belle Dame sans Mercy.

Questions about belle dame sans merci

What does belle dame sans merci mean?
Belle dame sans merci means a beautiful woman who seduces a man and then consigns him to an unpleasant fate.
What part of speech is belle dame sans merci?
Belle dame sans merci is a noun.
What is the plural of belle dame sans merci?
The plural of belle dame sans merci is belles dames sans merci.

Words near belle dame sans merci in the dictionary

  1. Bellcurve Gods
  2. belldom
  3. belle
  4. Belle Chasse
  5. Belle Creek
  6. belle dame sans merci
  7. Belle de Boskoop
  8. belle epoque
  9. belle esprit
  10. Belle Fontaine
  11. Belle Fourche

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: belle dame sans merci (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “belle dame sans merci.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/belle_dame_sans_merci. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.