arrière-pensée

American  

[a-ryer-pahn-say] / a rjɛr pɑ̃ˈseɪ /

noun

French.

• arrière-pensées
  plural

1. a mental reservation; hidden motive.

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arrière-pensée British  

/ arjɛrpɑ̃se /

noun

1. an unrevealed thought or intention

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• arrière-pensées
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of arrière-pensée

C19: literally: behind thought

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

arrière-pensée arrière-pensées

Tintoretto communicated his own savage grandeur, his own unrest, to those whom he depicted; Paolo Veronese charmed without arrière-pensée by the intensity of vitality which with perfect simplicity he preserved in his sitters.

From The Later Works of Titian by Claude Phillips

Emerson uses the word here in the same sense as the French arrière-pensée, a mental reservation.

From Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Edna Henry Lee Turpin

Nor was there any warrant for imputing to him dishonesty of purpose or arrière-pensée.

From The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Vol 2 of 3) by John Morley

But the needy poet may have had some arrière-pensée.

From Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal by Harold Edgeworth Butler

The latter, at last, answered him, not condescendingly, as Alyosha had feared, but with modesty and reserve, with evident goodwill and apparently without the slightest arrière-pensée.

From The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The envoys noticed that their words had ingeniously been twisted, but as they also had their own arrière-pensées in regard to the Turks, they only looked at each other with a smile and withdrew.

From The Slaves of the Padishah by M?r J?kai

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