billet-doux
Americannoun
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
By fear and awe were all oppressed And knew not what to do: But I, more bold than all the rest, Sent Kate my billets-doux.
From How She Felt in Her First Corset and Other Poems by Alderson, Matt. W.
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.
