Word.ws English Dictionary

malgré lui

malgré lui adverb: contrary to their desires or ambitions.

Adverb

malgré lui (not comparable)

  1. Contrary to their desires or ambitions.
    • […] and he pities "that class of young ladies who malgré lui are bound to fall in love with these wooden specimens of youthful manhood."1977, John Halperin, Trollope and Politics: A Study of the Pallisers and Others, page 257

Origin of malgré lui

Borrowed from French malgré (“against”) and French lui (“him”).

Questions about malgré lui

What does malgré lui mean?
Malgré lui means contrary to their desires or ambitions.
What part of speech is malgré lui?
Malgré lui is an adverb.

Words near malgré lui in the dictionary

  1. Malghum
  2. Malglish
  3. malgovernance
  4. malgovernment
  5. malgre
  6. malgré lui
  7. malguzar
  8. malguzars
  9. Malham
  10. malhamensilipin
  11. Malhams

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: malgré lui (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: “malgré lui.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/malgr%C3%A9_lui. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.