enfant terrible
Pluralenfants terribles
- 1An unconventional, badly behaved person whose conduct embarrasses or shocks others.
At every family dinner Uncle Ray played the enfant terrible, telling crude jokes in front of the pastor.
Long the enfant terrible of the city council, she once arrived at a budget hearing in a clown wig.
Similarmaverick, rebel, provocateur, troublemaker
Note
English keeps the French grammar of the phrase: the adjective follows the noun, and both words take -s in the plural, enfants terribles. It usually comes with the and an of-phrase naming the circle being shocked, as in the enfant terrible of our little world, so the person is cast as the unruly child of some grown-up company.
- 2A strikingly unorthodox, innovative or avant-garde figure who has also been unusually successful.
Once the enfant terrible of American architecture, she now designs museums on three continents.
Hailed as the enfant terrible of the city's dining scene, the young chef won a national award for his strange tasting menus.
Similarmaverick, iconoclast, wunderkind
Note
Admiration creeps in here: the rule-breaker succeeds, and the label becomes half a compliment. Henry Adams, in The Education of Henry Adams, gives it to Palmerston, a man believed to lay traps for diplomats. It can last a whole career; in 2023 Michel Houellebecq was still, at 67, the enfant terrible of French letters.
- 3A child who is wild and hard to control.
Their youngest was an enfant terrible at four, climbing the bookshelves and biting anyone who said no.
The governess gave notice after a single week with the twins, a pair of enfants terribles who flooded the nursery and hid her spectacles.
Note
This is the French phrase taken at its word, "terrible child", for a real child running riot. Louisa May Alcott's Rose in Bloom (1876) has a boy who is "a perfect cherub" on the first day and an enfant terrible before the week is out. The literal use is obsolete; the phrase now goes to adults, as the shocking troublemaker or the daring success.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of enfant terrible apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
An unadapted borrowing from French enfant terrible (literally "terrible child").