mauvaise honte

English

Etymology

From French mauvaise honte.

Noun

mauvaise honte (uncountable)

1. Shyness, especially when affected; false modesty. [from 18th c.]
   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:

     In that capacity she sat with becoming easiness of mien (for she was as void of the mauvaise honte as any dutchess in the land) [and] bowed very graciously to the compliments of the gentlemen […] .

   • 1826, Henry Digby Beste, Four Years in France, Henry Colburn (publisher), pages 240–242, quoted in The Monthly Review, Volume III, Number XI (September 1826), page 95:

     The practice, from whatever it may arise, is very embarrassing to the mauvaise honte of an Englishman: this may easily be surmounted, when it is perceived that the first visit is always considered as a polite attention.

   • 1831 June 18, Elizabeth Gaskell, edited by John Chapple and Alan Shelston, Further Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 3:

     So much for Miss Jaques, only as far as I could judge from seeing her in a ball-room, she never evinced any extreme of mauvaise honte – What did you think, mia cara?

   • 1831, Thomas Babington Macaulay, letter to Hannah M. Macaulay, printed in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume I, Longmans, Green, and Co. (1876), page 239:

     Nothing but strong excitement and a great occasion overcomes a certain reserve and mauvaise honte which I have in public speaking; not a mauvaise honte which in the least confuses me or makes me hesitate for a word, but which keeps me from putting any fervour into my tone or my action.

   • 1848 January, Frederic Wonham, “Mauvaise Honte”, in William Shirrefs, editor, The People's Press, volume 11, number 13, page 104:

     This writer was the victim of the most crushing mauvaise honte, and could therefore describe it from experience.

   • 1875 April, Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, Photography, in Quarterly Review, #101 (April 1857), page 2:

     Slight improvements in processes,and slight varieties in conclusions, are discussed as if they involved the welfare of mankind. They seek each other's sympathy, and they resent each other's interference, with an ardour of expression at variance with all the sobrieties of business, and the habits of reserve; and old-fashioned English mauvaise honte is extinguished in the excitement...

References

• Merriam-Webster Online [1]
• John Frederick Stanford, C. A. M. Fennell (1892) “mauvaise honte, phr.: Fr.: false shame, false modesty, painful shyness”, in The Stanford dictionary of anglicised words and phrases, page 532

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mo.vɛz ɔ̃t/, /mɔ.vɛz ɔ̃t/

Noun

mauvaise honte f (usually uncountable, plural mauvaises hontes)

1. false modesty
   • p. 1610, a. 1710, Paul Scarron, A Madame Celeste de Palaiseau, in Œuvres, volume I:

     Par je ne sais quelle bonté, ou, si l’on veut, mauvaise honte, je n’ai pas la force de rien refuser de ce que l’on me demande avec opiniâtreté.

     By some kindness, or false modesty if you will, I don't have the force to refuse anything that is asked of me firmly.

   • 1673, Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Épîtres (Epistles), Épitre III:

     Mais aucun de ces maux n’égala les rigueurs
     Que la mauvaise honte exerça dans les cœurs.

     But none of these ills was equal to the rigors
     That false modesty exercises in the heart.

   • 1687, François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, chapter 9, in Éducation des filles:

     La mauvaise honte est le mal le plus dangereux et le plus pressé à guérir.

     False modesty is the most dangerous vice, and the most urgent to cure.

   • p. 1712, François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Dialogues des morts ancien dial., published a. 1766, section 45:

     Ce n’est pas le vrai honneur, c’est une mauvaise honte qui me retient.

     It's not true honor, but a false modesty that holds me back.

   • 1731, Voltaire, Charles XII, section 8:

     Il [Charles XII] avait conservé, dans l’inflexibilité de son caractère, cette timidité qu’on nomme mauvaise honte.

     He [Charles XII] had conserved, in the inflexibility of his personality, this timidity that we call false modesty.

   • 1780, Desiderius Erasmus, translated by Thibault de Laveaux, Éloge de la folie:

     Retenus par une mauvaise honte, ils n’osent pas se louer eux-mêmes, mais ils attirent ordinairement auprès d’eux quelque panégyriste doucereux, quelque poète hâbleur qui, pour de l’argent s’engage à les louer, c’est à dire à leur débiter des mensonges.

     Restrained by a false modesty, they didn't dare praise themselves, but they ordinarily gathered around themselves some saccharine sycophant, some exaggerating poet who for money set about praising them, that is, peddling lies to them.