beaux esprits


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beaux es·prits

 (bō′zĕ-sprē′)
n.
Plural of bel esprit.
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.
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German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits, eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them.
Such efforts at conversation won her the appellation of "that good Mademoiselle Cormon," which, from the lips of the beaux esprits of society, means that she was as ignorant as a carp, and rather a poor fool; but many persons of her own calibre took the remark in its literal sense, and answered:--
Opening the film festival is the French comedy Les Beaux Esprits by Vianney Lebasque and Liberty, the 1929 silent movie with slapstick stars Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.