BÊTE NOIRE
Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 11:47 pm
• bête noire •
Pronunciation: bet nwah(r)
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: A threat, something feared and to be avoided, a bane, something that makes life miserable for an individual or organization.
Notes: Today's word is good for representing any distasteful threat. Because it is actually a French phrase, it has no relatives in English with one possible exception. Some people, with good reason, refer to the red bug, sometimes called a chigger or jigger (the larval Thrombidium), that burrows under the skin, causing relentless itching, a bête rouge "red beast". In A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh wrote, "He had picked up bêtes rouges in the bush and they were crawling and burrowing under his skin."
In Play: Many of us have personal bêtes noires, "The Vietnamese War turned into a bête noire of President Lyndon Johnson, one that he could not evade." But a bête noire need not be so large, "Gladys Friday's bête noire in high school was mathematics until she fell in love with a geek with a full-function calculator she could keep out of the visual range of her teacher."
Word History: Any time you see a hat on a French vowel, you know that an [s] used to follow it. So bête was beste when we borrowed it for our beast; it originated in Latin bestia "beast". French noir "black" devolved from Latin niger "black". The [g] was lost because French vowels are rather merciless to lone consonants stranded between them. This is also how Latin vitellus "calf" ended up as Middle French veal when we borrowed it. The fact that the same word is veau [vo] "calf" in French today suggests that they are just as mean to any lone consonant without another consonant to lean on. (Today we thank Chris Stewart, a long-standing bête blanche of Good Words and a friend from the very first Word-of-the-Day days.)
Pronunciation: bet nwah(r)
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: A threat, something feared and to be avoided, a bane, something that makes life miserable for an individual or organization.
Notes: Today's word is good for representing any distasteful threat. Because it is actually a French phrase, it has no relatives in English with one possible exception. Some people, with good reason, refer to the red bug, sometimes called a chigger or jigger (the larval Thrombidium), that burrows under the skin, causing relentless itching, a bête rouge "red beast". In A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh wrote, "He had picked up bêtes rouges in the bush and they were crawling and burrowing under his skin."
In Play: Many of us have personal bêtes noires, "The Vietnamese War turned into a bête noire of President Lyndon Johnson, one that he could not evade." But a bête noire need not be so large, "Gladys Friday's bête noire in high school was mathematics until she fell in love with a geek with a full-function calculator she could keep out of the visual range of her teacher."
Word History: Any time you see a hat on a French vowel, you know that an [s] used to follow it. So bête was beste when we borrowed it for our beast; it originated in Latin bestia "beast". French noir "black" devolved from Latin niger "black". The [g] was lost because French vowels are rather merciless to lone consonants stranded between them. This is also how Latin vitellus "calf" ended up as Middle French veal when we borrowed it. The fact that the same word is veau [vo] "calf" in French today suggests that they are just as mean to any lone consonant without another consonant to lean on. (Today we thank Chris Stewart, a long-standing bête blanche of Good Words and a friend from the very first Word-of-the-Day days.)