mauvais quart d'heure
Britishnoun
Etymology
Origin of mauvais quart d'heure
literally: (a) bad quarter of an hour
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 "Quart d'heure de Rabelais," if translated into Anglo-French, may be taken to express a bad time of it with the roughs in Trafalgar Square, i.e., a mauvais quart d'heure de Rabble—eh?
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, December 3, 1887 by Various
Still, the apprehensions of the concealed spectators are not the less keen, and to them it is a period of dread, irksome suspense, emphatically a mauvais quart d’heure.
From The Land of Fire A Tale of Adventure by Mayne Reid
Let me tell you that married life is a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite week-ends.
From The Sixth Sense A Novel by Stephen McKenna
For Eglah, the clock of fate had begun to chime that mauvais quart d'heure which Mrs. Maurice had known would inevitably overtake her, and the preliminary whirring of the hidden cogs had found her unprepared.
From A Speckled Bird by Augusta J. Evans Wilson
Oh yes, it was a mauvais quart d'heure of the first order.
From Far to Seek A Romance of England and India by Maud Diver
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.
