bete noire
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˌbeɪt ˈnwɑːr/
:
bete noire
- For example, the treble damages provisions of U.S. law are a bete noire that is compared unfavorably with the provisions of Canadian law for full damages, but not more.
Examples
-
My particular bete noire is recipes that go over the page, because I use a plastic book holder in the kitchen and have to wash my hands, fish the book out, turn the page, and put it back, trying to remember what the other page said.
Blog text (8) -
The bete noire of this chapter of arts education history lurks not in the research itself or in the numerous points of honest confusion and disagreement.
Academic text (2001) -
Before Microsoft got on its bad side, Apple's bete noire was Big Blue, which introduced its alternative to Apple, the PC, in 1981.
Blog text (18) -
You don't really care about Muslims except to the extent they can be used as a stick with which to beat Americans and your other bete noire, Christianity.
Blog text (19) -
"You don't really care about Muslims except to the extent they can be used as a stick with which to beat Americans and your other bete noire, Christianity.
Blog text (19) -
Anything like an "infinitely qualitative difference" between God and the universe is as much a bete noire for Macquarrie as docetism is.
Academic text (1991) -
This class is the bete noire of the advocates of so-called cultural diversity who find bourgeois culture "stupefying," as Ethicist once put it.
Academic text (1991) -
Auntie's bete noire, Corcoran, took the wood from the soldiers' huts on both sides for a posh pigpen the locals call the Pork Hilton.
Fiction book (1998) -
His man, Mitt Romney, lost, and with him the hope of repealing Obamacare, the bete noire of much of the food industry, from Applebee's to Darden.
Blog text (14) -
For many people, public speaking is a bete noire that they actively try to avoid.
Synonyms
9
9.5
A person or thing people strongly dislike
A person or thing that people like least in a group
Antonyms
How Disliked
Surface Forms
Morphology
bete + noire
Bête noire is a French loanphrase whose idiomatic meaning 'an object of aversion' cannot be straightforwardly derived from the literal constituents ('bête' ~ 'beast', 'noire' ~ 'black'). The components are foreign to many learners and the literal image 'black beast' does not reliably map onto the sense 'pet peeve' for a B1 learner, so the expression is unpredictable and idiomatic.
Etymology
The phrase bete noire comes from French words bete and noire, which together mean 'black beast'. Imagine a scary animal that people were afraid of and tried to avoid, and that image shows why bete noire now means 'a person or thing you especially dislike'.