Meaning
A person or thing that one particularly detests, dreads or avoids; a bugbear. The register is formal to wry, and it almost always appears in the pattern 'someone's bête noire', implying a deep, recurring personal aversion rather than active enmity. Wry and mildly literary; almost always possessed ('her bête noire') and gentler in force than 'enemy'. Regional use: General English (borrowed from French).
Origin
French for 'black beast' (bête = beast, noire = black). In French the phrase denotes a person or thing for which one feels instinctive aversion, and English borrowed that figurative sense whole; the native English equivalent is bugbear, which Merriam-Webster gives as a synonym. Merriam-Webster dates the first known English use to 1805, while Dictionary.com records the borrowing between 1835 and 1845 and describes the idiom as entering English in the early 1800s. No single populariser is documented. The French plural bêtes noires is generally kept, though unaccented spellings such as bete noire and bete noir are common in informal writing.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- bete noir
- betenoir
- betes noires
Usage Examples
- Split infinitives were my old editor's bête noire; he circled every one in red ink.
- Wet weather is the gardener's bête noire at this time of year.
- Audits are the bête noire of small charities that rely on volunteer bookkeepers.