Word.ws English Dictionary

tendresse

tendresse noun: tenderness, gentle intimacy or affection.

Noun

tendresse (countable and uncountable, plural tendresses)

  1. Tenderness, gentle intimacy or affection.
    • A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its...1955, John Ray, Jr. [pseudonym; Vladimir Nabokov], “Foreword”, in Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC, page 7
    • When Papillon makes his last impossible try for freedom they embrace with the tendresse of lovers, however manly and platonic.1974 February 2, Jonathan Cross, “Poor Butterfly”, in Gay Community News, volume 1, number 32, page 4

Examples of tendresse in a sentence

  • But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!1955, John Ray, Jr. [pseudonym; Vladimir Nabokov], “Foreword”, in Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge]...
  • Women loved him, it is true, but he could not respond with enduring tendresse.1976 June 12, Alden Whitman, “Books of The Times”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
  • Tár has furthermore conceived a tendresse for a new cellist.2023 January 11, Peter Bradshaw, “Tár review – Cate Blanchett is perfect lead in delirious, sensual drama”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The...

Forms of tendresse

pluraltendresses

Origin of tendresse

Borrowed from French tendresse.

Questions about tendresse

What does tendresse mean?
Tendresse means tenderness, gentle intimacy or affection.
How do you use tendresse in a sentence?
But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!
What part of speech is tendresse?
Tendresse is a noun.
What is the plural of tendresse?
The plural of tendresse is tendresses.

Words near tendresse in the dictionary

  1. tendracs
  2. tendre
  3. tendred
  4. tendrely
  5. tendres
  6. tendresse
  7. tendries
  8. tendril
  9. tendril perversion
  10. tendril perversions
  11. tendrilar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tendresse (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: “tendresse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tendresse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.