Word.ws English Dictionary

belle laide

belle laide noun: a woman who is attractive despite not being conventionally beautiful.

Noun

belle laide (plural belles laides)

  1. A woman who is attractive despite not being conventionally beautiful.
    • Perhaps her looks were not considered downright repulsive. But she was not even what in those years was called une belle laide, being neither feminine, nor soft, nor submissive.1979, Peter Drucker, The Man Who Invented Kissinger, John Wiley, published 1997, page 143

Forms of belle laide

pluralbelles laides

Origin of belle laide

From French, belle (“beautiful woman”) + laide (“ugly”).

Questions about belle laide

What does belle laide mean?
Belle laide means a woman who is attractive despite not being conventionally beautiful.
What part of speech is belle laide?
Belle laide is a noun.
What is the plural of belle laide?
The plural of belle laide is belles laides.

Words near belle laide in the dictionary

  1. Belle Fourche
  2. Belle Glade
  3. belle indifference
  4. Belle Isle
  5. Belle Isle cress
  6. belle laide
  7. Belle Mead
  8. belle of the ball
  9. Belle Plaine
  10. belle sabreuse
  11. Belle Vue

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: belle laide (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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