bel esprit
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of bel esprit
First recorded in 1630–40; French: literally, “fine mind, wittiness”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The remnants beyond the threshold were from an estate that belonged to George Bucknam Dorr, a Boston lawyer, philanthropist, trail builder, bel esprit and a founder of Acadia National Park.
From New York Times ● Aug. 8, 2014
This famous bel esprit played a very prominent part here.
From The Women of the French Salons by Mason, Amelia Ruth Gere
She was a bel esprit, and a dreadful Radical for those days.
From Vanity Fair by Thackeray, William Makepeace
Bussy-Rabutin was handsome, witty, brilliant, a bel esprit, a member of the Academie Francaise, and very much in love with his charming cousin, who clearly appreciated his talents, if not his character.
From The Women of the French Salons by Mason, Amelia Ruth Gere
She was a goddaughter of old Mary Wortley Montagu: and, like that famous old woman of the last century, made considerable pretensions to be a blue-stocking and a bel esprit.
From Barry Lyndon by Thackeray, William Makepeace
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
