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Great Expectations vocabulary
361 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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bagatelle
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synonyms: bag of shells, small beer ???
► definition
Definition:1. a mere trifle; no big woop2. a table game that is the predecessor to pinball, originally developed in 1777 during a party at Château de Bagatelle
photo: By Nikki Tysoe from London, UK - bagatelleUploaded by McGeddon, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9565113
► uses
Uses:
"A trifling thing, a mere bagatelle; because I was carrying off with me a little bookkeeper's wife, the impertinent husband permitted himself to shout! The idiot, I should have sent his wife back at the end of two days. Hang it! I'd no desire to keep her."
"Perhaps that's why he was angry."
Charles Paul de Kock. The Barber of Paris
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[a bed on the Calais-Mediterranean express] costs you between £4 and £5 if you take it from Calais, and between £3 and £4 if you take it from Paris (as I did), in addition to the first-class fare (no bagatelle that, either!), and, of course, in addition to your food.
Arnold Bennett. Paris Nights and Other Impressions of Places and People (1913)
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I now ventured to inquire the cause of the disturbance.
"A mere bagatelle," said Monsieur Maillard.
Edgar Allan Poe. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4: The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845)
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it requires something more than Brougham’s flippant ipse dixit to convince me that the office of Chancellor is such a sinecure and bagatelle.
Charles Greville. The Greville Memoirs, volume 2 (Mar. 15, 1831)
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He died in less than two hours of most terrible convulsions. But this is only a bagatelle. My mother, in despair, and scarcely less afflicted than myself, determined to absent herself for some time from so fatal a place.
Voltaire. Candide
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there was a bagatelle board in the room, in case we should desire to unbend our minds after the solemnity.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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