billet-doux
Americannoun
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billets-doux
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of billet-doux
1665–75; < French: literally, sweet note. See billet 1, douce
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.
See Examples For:
Anderson has inscribed a billet-doux to The New Yorker in its mid-20th-century glory years that is, at the same time, an ardent, almost orgiastic paean to the pleasures of print.
From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2021
“Wayward” is a billet-doux to that city, where Spiotta teaches at Syracuse University’s creative writing program.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 6, 2021
Nine years later, Melville assigned himself a far weightier role, as a journalist, in “Two Men in Manhattan,” his billet-doux to New York, complete with a suitably blowsy score.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 24, 2017
Bodinetz's production, jointly presented with English Touring Theatre, is refreshingly rococo – it's almost a novelty to witness a set of Molière characters corresponding through billet-doux rather than by text message.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 21, 2013
Well, at all events, she can't write to me, as we shall be under the same roof; and I shall dismiss the very first servant who brings me a billet-doux.
From Airy Fairy Lilian by Margaret Wolfe Hamilton (AKA Duchess)
The billets-doux helped, but they included correspondence only from Mr. Tomlin and Mr. Houseman.
From New York Times ● Jun. 5, 2015
But the appetite for these billets-doux sometimes gets the better of even the most serious publications.
From US News ● Feb. 10, 2015
Inside are a book stand/writing surface, two compartments for stashing toiletries, and a smaller drawer that’s perfectly sized for billets-doux.
From New York Times ● Dec. 30, 2011
She has always hunted out old letters from antique markets, little scraps of billets-doux and deeds of sale, faint tracings of forgotten human hope in copperplate, the ink faded to brown and grey.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 9, 2011
And with this he pulled out some emetic billets-doux, wrapped up like bonbons.
From Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces; or, the Wedded Life, Death, and Marriage of Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkaes, Parish Advocate in the Burgh of Kuhschnappel. by Jean Paul
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.
