Word.ws English Dictionary

mauvais quart d'heure

/məʊˌveɪ kɑː(ɹ)ˈdɜː(ɹ)/

mauvais quart d'heure noun: a brief unpleasant period; a bad yet quick experience.

Noun

mauvais quart d'heure (plural mauvais quarts d'heure)

  1. (UK) A brief unpleasant period; a bad yet quick experience.
    • Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d’heure made up of exquisite moments.1893, Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, published 1906, act II, page 74
    • It was a mauvais quart d’heure, the Christmas holidays of ’96, and poor Willy Phillips never lived to see the fight recovered.1898 April 13, Henry Adams, “[Letter]”, in Ernest Samuels, editor, Henry Adams: Selected Letters, published 1992, →ISBN, page 343

Forms of mauvais quart d'heure

pluralmauvais quarts d'heure

Origin of mauvais quart d'heure

Unadapted borrowing from French mauvais quart d'heure (“bad quarter of an hour”).

Questions about mauvais quart d'heure

What does mauvais quart d'heure mean?
Mauvais quart d'heure means a brief unpleasant period; a bad yet quick experience.
What part of speech is mauvais quart d'heure?
Mauvais quart d'heure is a noun.
How do you pronounce mauvais quart d'heure?
Mauvais quart d'heure is pronounced /məʊˌveɪ kɑː(ɹ)ˈdɜː(ɹ)/.
What is the plural of mauvais quart d'heure?
The plural of mauvais quart d'heure is mauvais quarts d'heure.

Words near mauvais quart d'heure in the dictionary

  1. mauthers
  2. mauto
  3. mautos
  4. Mautz
  5. Mautzes
  6. mauvais quart d'heure
  7. mauvais quarts d'heure
  8. mauvaise honte
  9. mauvaise langue
  10. mauvaniline
  11. mauve

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mauvais quart d'heure (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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