Meaning
A legal case or controversy that arouses intense and lasting public interest; by extension, any notorious person, event or thing. English began with the narrow legal sense and later widened it, sometimes stretching it to mean any celebrated cause or movement, a looseness that usage commentators criticise. Formal and journalistic register. Journalistic and formal; now usually printed without italics and strongly coloured by scandal or controversy. Regional use: General English (borrowed from French).
Origin
French for 'celebrated case' or 'famous case' (cause = legal case, célèbre = famous). The phrase comes from the titles of published collections of notable French court decisions: François Gayot de Pitaval compiled the first series of 22 volumes in the 18th century, Nicolas-Toussaint Des Essarts added 15 volumes of Nouvelles Causes Célèbres, and the complete work appeared in 37 volumes in 1763, the same year Merriam-Webster dates the first known English use. The expression became much more common in English after the wrongful espionage conviction of Alfred Dreyfus in 1894 scandalised France and drew international attention. Initially confined to notorious trials, the sense broadened to any famous or infamous person, thing or event. Notably, the phrase is no longer used as such in modern French; English has fully adopted it, and most dictionaries now print it without italics.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- causes celebres
- causes célèbres
Usage Examples
- The library's threatened closure became a cause célèbre, with authors lobbying councillors for months.
- Her dismissal turned into a cause célèbre after the trade unions took up the story.
- The trial remains a cause célèbre among civil liberties campaigners fifty years on.