bête noire
/bɛt ˈnwɑː/
"bete-noire" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bête noire” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked; the bane of someone's existence; an object of aversion; an anathema.
Corpus desk
Index EN-bete-noire · bête noire · English
bête noire · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bête noire |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɛt ˈnwɑː/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “bête noire” in English
Rare enough to double-check
bête noire is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /bɛt ˈnwɑː/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked; the bane of someone's existence; an object of aversion; an anathema.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for bête noire, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Unadapted borrowing from French bête noire (“(figurative) intolerable person”, literally “black beast”). The correct English form is bête noire, spelled B-Ê-T-E- -N-O-I-R-E.
Definition
- 1Someone or something that is unbearable and so particularly avoided or disliked; the bane of someone's existence; an object of aversion; an anathema.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bête noire appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[A] petticoated politician was [Napoleon] Bonaparte's bête noire, or antipathy, […]
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.
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French bête noire (“(figurative) intolerable person”, literally “black beast”).
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.