Speakur

Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

belle dame sans merci

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.66 in modern English

Syllables
belle -dame san-s mer-ci
IPA
27
Scrabble Score
18
Letters
4
Syllables
11
Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A beautiful woman who seduces a man and then consigns him to an unpleasant fate.

Etymology

From French belle dame sans merci (literally “beautiful woman without mercy”). La Belle Dame sans Merci is the title of a ballad produced by the English poet John Keats in 1819; this was derived from the title of a 15th-century poem by Alain Chartier, La Belle Dame sans Mercy.

Origin

Word Breakdown

Inflected Forms

belles dames sans merci (plural)

Phrases

ice queen

Frequently Paired Words

ice queen

Questions

What does belle dame sans merci mean?
A beautiful woman who seduces a man and then consigns him to an unpleasant fate.
Where does belle dame sans merci come from?
It is traced to French.

How to pronounce belle dame sans merci

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