Word of the Day

: February 14, 2017

billet-doux

noun bill-ee-DOO

What It Means

: a love letter

billet-doux in Context

While cleaning out her parents' basement, Amy stumbled upon a box containing billets-doux written by her dad to his high-school sweetheart—her mom.

"… when you stop to think about it the entire panoply of behaviours we consider as romantic, from sending little billets-doux, to developing a shared vocabulary of pet names, are … infantile. What's romance, then, but a kind of childish make-believe?" — Will Self, Prospect, 13 Oct. 2016

Did You Know?

The first recorded use of the French word billet doux (literally, "sweet letter") in an English context occurs in John Dryden's 1673 play Marriage a-la-Mode. In the play, Dryden pokes fun at linguistic Francophiles in English society through the comic character Melanthe, who is described by her prospective lover Rodophil as follows: "No lady can be so curious of a new fashion as she is of a new French word; she's the very mint of the nation, and as fast as any bullion comes out of France, coins it immediately into our language." True to form, Melanthe describes Rodophil with the following words: "Let me die, but he's a fine man; he sings and dances en Français, and writes the billets doux to a miracle."