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''contretemps'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250725234329-00-⌔

contretemps - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

contretemps (plural contretemps)

  • An unforeseen, inopportune, or embarrassing event.
    • ✤ Synonyms: hitch, mishap
    • ✤ …and said “she had been the most efficient friend of the charity;” and whether a whisper that had gone forth respecting her contretemps with the strange man was spread, or it had fortunately been so well managed by the Count as to have escaped observation…1
    • ✤ “I see that you are a born American citizen—and an earlier knowledge of that fact would have prevented this little contretemps. You are aware, Mr. Hoffman, that your name is German?”2
    • ✤ What a strange contretemps! Its suddenness left me temporarily speechless; the embarrassment of Duare was only too obvious. Yet it was that unusual paradox, a happy contretemps —for me at least.3
    • ✤ Mrs. Post was the center of a notable contretemps when she spilled a spoonful of berries at a dinner of the Gourmet Society here in 1938.4
    • ✤ The small flap over the pronunciation of her name was but the first, and the least, of the contretemps of the succeeding session.5
    • ✤ It won’t rank with the doping scandals in track and field and baseball’s steroid controversy but the Rose Cup race had its own little contretemps last year.6
    • ✤ It is worth considering what the misperceptions about him might be if the whole “contretemps with Oprah,” as he calls it, hadn’t happened.7
    • ✤ The spat was just the latest in a series of contretemps between the RN and the AfD.8
  • (fencing) An ill-timed pass.

Etymology

Borrowed from French contretemps.

Pronunciation

The plural (spelled identically) is pronounced with final/z/or, as in French, like the singular.

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkɒn.tɹə.tɑ̃ŋ/
  • (US) IPA: /ˈkɑːn.tɹə.tɑ̃/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXIV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 2: ↩

  2. 1896, Bret Harte, The Indiscretion of Elsbeth: ↩

  3. 1932, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter XII, in Pirates of Venus ‎, published 1934: ↩

  4. 1960 June 13, “Emily Post Is Dead Here at 86; Writer was Arbiter of Etiquette”, in New York Times: ↩

  5. 1991, Rebecca Goldstein, The Dark Sister, Penguin Books, published 1993, page 37: ↩

  6. 2004 June 13, Sunday Oregonian: ↩

  7. 2018 June 26, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Jonathan Franzen Is Fine With All of It”, in The New York Times ‎, →ISSN: ↩

  8. 2024 May 4, Guy Chazan, Leila Abboud, “Le Pen strains ties with German far-right”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 2: ↩

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