Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Literature regarded for its aesthetic value rather than its didactic or informative content.
- n. Light, stylish writings, usually on literary or intellectual subjects.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Polite or elegant literature: a word of somewhat indefinite application, including poetry, fiction, and other imaginative literature, and the studies and criticism connected therewith; literature regarded as a form of fine art.
Wiktionary
- n. literary works valued more for their aesthetic qualities than for any informative or educational content
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Polite or elegant literature; the humanities; -- used somewhat vaguely for literary works in which imagination and taste are predominant.
WordNet 3.0
- n. creative writing valued for esthetic content
- n. creative writing valued for esthetic content
Etymologies
- French (Wiktionary)
- French : belles, fine + lettres, letters, literature. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It has also given us some wild cards, unexpected treats that belong on the shelf once labeled belles-lettres but now more commonly known (thanks to Dave Eggers's annual paperback anthologies) as nonrequired reading.”
“Throughout her life, Bracha Habas sought also to engage in belles-lettres.”
“American scholarly trends, steering their students away from popular pulp literature to belles-lettres.”
“London's The Call of the Wild and White Fang are listed as books for youth whereas Martin Eden is belles-lettres or "fine literature.”
“When a few hardy critics even write about London's stories, they carefully avoid the "kiddy lit" and focus exclusively on London's belles-lettres: Adventure, Burning Daylight, John Barleycorn, The”
“The standard by which all of belles-lettres are to be judged.”
Crit List 7: Let The Parade Of Sleaze Begin -- The Fungus and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
“This is the mistake of believing that experience can be absorbed, both understood and expressed, wholly in literature; and in literature, moreover, which is reduced to belles-lettres prose fiction, poetry, drama, and literary criticism.”
“By Gissing's late-Victorian day, the street's name had been changed, but the phrase "Grub Street" still conjured a world of shabby belles-lettres.”
“One gentleman was a deep philologist — he talked with him on the origin of the alphabet as if he had been coeval with Cadmus; another a celebrated critic, — you would have said the old man had studied political economy and belles-lettres all his life, — of science it is unnecessary to speak, it was his own distinguished walk.”
“No one is under an obligation to read poetry or fiction or the miscellaneous literature which is classed as belles-lettres.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘belles-lettres’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Bells and Whistles
Liberty Bell, Belle and Sebastian, Whistler's Mother, whistle stop, pennywhistle, whistle pig, wolf whistle, wet your whistle, barbell, bell jar, Bell's palsy, bell pepper and 138 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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Loan words from French
gite, coq au vin, dernier cri, clique, hors d'œuvre, touché, naïve, coquette, bourgeois, contretemps, flâneur, film noir and 63 more...
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roseandivy's list
mooncalf, wonted, gibbet, artless, noontide, blithe, glitterati, vorpal, soporific, moxie, pilfer, betwixt and between and 263 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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Clearinghouse
For stuff to simply reside.
calcar, pinion, espadrille, antipodes, peregrine, cormorant, tanager, vireo, farrago, undervest, passerine, oscine and 881 more...
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rememberers
prolix, ageusia, animadversion, anodyne, antic, arabesque, beadle, brachymetropia, colophon, desquamation, diaphoresis, diegesis and 3248 more...
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lovely & attractive
shellac, flimflammed, verisimilitude, necromancer, wax, behemoth, smarmy, spleen, onomatopoeia, niminy-piminy, nonplus, degringolade and 63 more...
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precious
adorable sounding words and whatnot.
finikin, slimikin, tinkershere, ateknia, kindergraph, skygodlin, amoret, belles-lettres, bellwether, bonnibel, sylph, basorexia and 54 more...
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wordie
morbid, ostentatious, enigma, heppelwhite, widdershins, mabel, caligari, maple, sebald, daedalus, salmonella, juggernaut and 62 more...
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Poppy's list
giggle-gasp, weaselspeak, laquer, gypping, fatalistically, paint the lily, neddying, neddying, festination, heckeldy peckledy, tigon, pawpawsaurus and 14 more...
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la baguette
bête noire, l'esprit d'escalier, noblesse oblige, cause célèbre, coup de grâce, belle époque, carte blanche, de rigueur, outré, sang-froid, force majeure, enfant terrible and 44 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for belles-lettres.
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