billet-doux

Also found in: Idioms.

bil·let-doux

(bĭl′ā-do͞o′)

n. pl. bil·lets-doux (bĭl′ā-do͞oz′)

A love letter.

[French : billet, short note; see billet¹ + doux, sweet (from Latin dulcis).]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

billet-doux

(ˌbɪlɪˈduː; French bijɛdu)

n, pl billets-doux (ˌbɪlɪˈduːz; French bijɛdu)

old-fashioned or jocular a love letter

[C17: from French, literally: a sweet letter, from billet (see billet¹) + doux sweet, from Latin dulcis]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

bil•let-doux

(ˈbɪl eɪˈdu, ˈbɪl i-)

n., pl. bil•lets-doux (ˈbɪl eɪˈduz, -ˈdu, ˈbɪl i-)

a love letter.

[1665–75; < French]

billet-doux

A French phrase meaning sweet letter, used to mean a love letter.

Translations

billet-doux

[ˈbɪleɪˈduː] N (billets-doux (pl)) [ˈbɪleɪˈduː] → carta f amorosa

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

billet-doux

n → Liebesbrief m, → Billetdoux nt (old)

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

Mentioned in ?

References in classic literature ?

Only circulars, and this coroneted billet-doux for you.

View in context

"Come and have one with me now before you read your little billet-doux, eh?"

View in context

Melinda Hartz McElroy, Billet-Doux Couture Stationary & Invitations

Women, children in Africa to benefit from Barrington Hills garden fair

Tomboy is a beautifully crafted billet-doux to childhood innocence that deals sensitively with issues of gender identity and first crushes.

MOVIE WATCH III

No felony, I hope." "Don't be ridiculous," he dismissed me with his all-knowing smile that I hated so much in school, when all the pretty girls were after him and employed me to hand their billet-doux on to him, the football star.

And the word will set me free

These days with email, text and Twitter, Nott's billet-doux would have been leaked all over the internet within minutes.

Progress is Nott all it's cracked up to be

"Billet-doux": Was I tired of being human/when I dreamed that stub cicada,/blown cavity, bezeled melee of oblivion, blizzarding bees,//my wrists a slurry, melting snow/contused with apple sap?

The Poetry Shelf

If the whole movie is, as Hazanavicius has said, a love letter to cinema, then the music is a special billet-doux to the great composers of Hollywood, including Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, and Charlie Chaplin, and the longstanding tradition of film composers shamelessly lifting ideas from great composers like Prokofiev, Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninov, and many more.

Music: The Language of The Artist

Tomboy is a beautifully crafted billet-doux to childhood innocence that deals sensitively on-screen chemistry with Disson, while Malonn Levana scene steals as Laure's precocious younger sister.

TOP 10 FILMS OF 2011

For an encore, I present a saga of love lost and regained based on a different rhyme: I heard from you By billet-doux Two words "We're through!" With passe-partout In hand, I flew To rendezvous New love pursue, We bill and coo-My own sweet coup!

Look Back!

A secondary and equally fraught romance is played out between the too-good Julia and the overwrought Faulkland, while Lydia's meddling aunt Malaprop exchanges lustful billet-doux with the stage Irishman Lucius O'Trigger, who's being misled by the cunning maid Lucy to think his correspondent is actually the lovely Lydia.