mésalliance
Americannoun
-
mésalliances
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mésalliance
From French, dating back to 1775–85; see origin at mis- 1, alliance
Vocabulary lists containing mesalliance
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:
One kind of clue in analysis is a mésalliance — a mismatch.
From New York Times ● Dec. 17, 2019
The mésalliance here, I’m suspecting, is the mismatch between the intensity of feeling and the referenced event that provoked the feeling.
From New York Times ● Dec. 17, 2019
Seems a puzzling mésalliance on the part of Mssrs.
From Forbes ● Nov. 3, 2014
Francis I. had regarded his son's marriage with a Medici as a mésalliance, and had only allowed it in the belief that this son would never be the Dauphin.
From The Works of Honor? de Balzac About Catherine de' Medici, Seraphita and Other Stories by Honor? de Balzac
Her mother had made a mésalliance by marrying an actor.
From By Conduct and Courage A Story of the Days of Nelson by W. (William) Rainey
This is why mésalliances, as a rule, turn out to be very unhappy marriages.
From Her Royal Highness Woman by Max O'Rell
Crimes, divorces, elopements, mésalliances, gossip of all kinds, furnish the papers with three-quarters of their contents.
From Jonathan and His Continent Rambles Through American Society by Jack Allyn
She has been called an artist in mésalliances, a mismatch-maker of dangerous cunning, a dangler of picturesque beggar-maids before romantic-eyed Cophetuas, a daring promoter of ambitious American girls and a champion of musical comedy peeresses.
From Kimono by John Paris
I mean to say, he was coming it pretty thick, since he could not have forgotten that each time I had warned him so he could hasten to save his brother from distressing mésalliances.
From Ruggles of Red Gap by Harry Leon Wilson
The fear of mésalliances was ever in his mind, and furiously would he drive away the village pariahs when they came slinking round the house, with lolling tongues.
From Oriental Encounters Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 by Marmaduke William Pickthall
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.
