bête noire
\bɛt nwaʁ\
The verdict
“bête noire” is uncommon French (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency French
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Chose ou personne que l’on redoute le plus.
Corpus desk
Index FR-bete-noire · bête noire · French
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
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 | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \bɛt nwaʁ\ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « bête noire » en français
Rare enough to double-check
bête noire is uncommon French outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed \bɛt nwaʁ\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for bête noire, suggesting the orthography follows predictable French patterns. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct French form is bête noire, spelled B-Ê-T-E- -N-O-I-R-E.
Definition
- 1Chose ou personne que l’on redoute le plus.
- 2Sanglier.
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.
Le solfège est sa bête noire ; elle déteste ça et parle même d’arrêter le conservatoire.
Ce club est notre bête noire : ils ne gagnent que contre nous et nous ne perdons que contre eux.
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.