Meaning of enfant terrible | Babel Free

Definitions

1. An unconventional badly-behaved person who causes embarrassment or shock to others.
2. An unusually successful person who is strikingly unorthodox, innovative, or avant-garde.
3. A wild child.
   literally, obsolete

Equivalents

Examples

“He was soon the talk of the town, the enfant terrible of our little world.”

“Diplomatists have no right to complain of mere lies; it is their own fault, if, educated as they are, the lies deceive them; but they complain bitterly of traps. Palmerston was believed to lay traps. He was the enfant terrible of the British Government.”

“The clip shows the 67-year-old enfant terrible of French letters in pyjamas lying on a bed next to a woman in a nightie, smoking and laughing.”

““A perfect cherub” she pronounced it the first day, but an “enfant terrible” before the week was over, for the young hero rioted by day, howled by night, ravaged the house from top to bottom, and kept his guardians in a series of panics by his hairbreadth escapes.”

CEFR level