bête noire

English

WOTD – 18 April 2024

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French bête noire (“(figurative) intolerable person”, literally “black beast”).^[1]^[2]

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɛt ˈnwɑː/, /beɪt-/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
(General American) IPA^(key): /bɛt ˈnwɑɹ/
Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)

Noun

bête noire (plural bêtes noires)

Someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked; the bane of someone's existence; an object of aversion; an anathema.
Synonyms: antipathy, bugbear
- 1833 October, “Art. V.—Mémoires de Madame la Duchesse d’Abrantes, ou Souvenirs Historiques sur Napoleon, la Revolution, le Directoire, le Consulat, l’Empire, et la Restauration. Tom. VII.—XII. 8vo. Paris. 1833. ”, in The Foreign Quarterly Review, volume XII, number XXIV, London: Treuttel and Würtz, and Richter, ; Black, Young, and Young, , →OCLC, page 390:
  petticoated politician was Bonaparte's bête noire, or antipathy, […]
- 1836 September, “Art. VIII.—1. A Letter to a Noble Lord on the Causes which have Produced the Present Reaction; with Remarks on Lord John Russell’s Letter to the Electors of the City of London. By Walker Skirrow, Esq. London. 1841 ”, in John Taylor Coleridge, editor, The Quarterly Review, volume LXVIII, number CXXXVI, London: John Murray, , →OCLC, page 504:
  No reader can be ignorant that for many years past the bêtes noires of the Whigs and Radicals were what they delighted to call ‘political parsons.’ If the clergyman was a magistrate, he was libelled as a political parson; if he presided at a vestry that levied a church-rate, he was persecuted as a political parson.
- 1844 January–December, W M Thackeray, “I Provide Nobly for My Family and Attain the Height of My (Seeming) Good Fortune”, in “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. [The Luck of Barry Lyndon.]”, in Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, volume III, London: Bradbury and Evans, , published 1856, →OCLC, page 216:
  […] I found at length that the widow was growing dreadfully afraid of me, calling me her bête noire, her dark spirit, her murderous adorer, and a thousand other names indicative of her extreme disquietude and terror.
- 1854, Margaret Maria Brewster, “Young Ladies’ Work”, in Work: Or Plenty to Do and How to Do It (), Edinburgh: Thomas Constable & Co.; London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., →OCLC, page 22:
  Unruly dogs and cows are the bêtes noires of her morning walks,—wasps and earwigs haunt her retirement,—and ghosts and burglaries mar her midnight peace!
- 1997 November 10, Bob Metcalfe, “TRUSTe Uses Consents and Disclosures to Protect Privacy on the Internet”, in Sandy Reed, editor, InfoWorld, volume 19, number 45, San Mateo, Calif.: InfoWorld Publishing Co., International Data Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 159, column 1:
  Life is easy for people who have just one bête noire and a trusty silver bullet. There are, for example, people whose bête noire is censorship and whose silver bullet is the First Amendment. […] And there are many whose life is all about this week's subject—privacy—as if nothing else matters. Problem is that privacy conflicts with other important rights, such as freedom of speech.
- 2006, Andy McDermott, chapter 9, in Final Destination: Death of the Senses, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire: Black Flame, →ISBN, page 288:
  The CD was leaning against the side of the right-hand shelf unit, so to get a firm grip with a fingertip, he was going to have to use his left hand. It went against every instinct he had about getting greasy fingermarks on CDs, a personal bête noire, but on this occasion he was just going to have to put up with it.
- 2022 January 24, Tim Black, “The UK Must Stop Meddling in Ukraine: Boris Johnson’s Sabre-rattling is Both Desperate and Dangerous”, in Tom Slater, editor, Spiked‎, London: Spiked Ltd., archived from the original on 2023-09-25:
  The government knows that the liberal broadsheet press is shot through with anti-Putin, borderline Russophobic prejudice. Indeed, many commentators still blame Russia for Brexit. And so, at its lowest ebb, Johnson's wretched government has decided to play to the gallery, and generate some plastic animosity towards the bête noire of the liberal elite.