mauvais quart d'heure

English

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French mauvais quart d’heure (“bad quarter of an hour”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /məʊˌveɪ kɑː(ɹ) ˈdɜː(ɹ)/

Noun

mauvais quart d'heure (plural mauvais quarts d'heure)

1. (chiefly British) A brief unpleasant period.
   • 1893, Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, published 1906, act II, page 74:

     Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d’heure made up of exquisite moments.

   • 1898 April 13, Henry Adams, “[Letter]”, in Ernest Samuels, editor, Henry Adams: Selected Letters, published 1992, →ISBN, page 343:

     It was a mauvais quart d’heure, the Christmas holidays of ’96, and poor Willy Phillips never lived to see the fight recovered.

   • 2003 November 1, Nicholas Lezard, “More than the usual authorial suspects”, in The Guardian:

     Many Guardian readers will have suffered a mauvais quart d'heure when they found out that their views on the Gulf war were closer to Peter's than Christopher's.

   • 2020 December 17, Rosemary Hill, “Gosh, what am I like?”, in London Review of Books, volume 42, number 24:

     Kate Fall, Cameron’s deputy chief of staff, has an initial mauvais quart d’heure when all she is offered is the chance to run Comic Relief […]

References

• “mauvais quart d’heure, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.