cause celebre
noun
Simple meaning
An incident that attracts great public attention.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kahzsehluhbruhSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkɑzˈsɛləbɹə
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An incident that attracts great public attention
chiefly us
An issue or incident (originally, a legal case) arousing widespread controversy or public debate.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: An incident that attracts great public attention
Used this way, cause celebre is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.