belle
/bɛl/noun, adjective
A beautiful, admired, or socially prominent woman
From French, ultimately Latin belle (Beautiful).
Lineage
The story
Picture a woman arriving at a 17th-century gathering, dressed so strikingly that the room seems to arrange itself around her: English speakers borrowed French belle in the 1620s for just such a “reigning beauty.” The French word came through Old French bele from Latin bella, the feminine form of bellus, “beautiful” or “fair.” The proposed deeper history is more surprising: etymologists connect bellus to a diminutive meaning and to a disputed Proto-Indo-European root associated with favor or reverence. The same belle appears in Italian belladonna, literally “beautiful lady”—the name for deadly nightshade, though the familiar story about women using its juice as eye drops may be folk etymology. So belle carries two sharply different images: the dazzling woman at the party, and a poisonous plant with a name fit for one.
Words from the same roots
belle · French, ultimately Latin, ‘Beautiful; a beautiful or admired woman’
Derivedbelladonna, beldam, belles-lettres, belvedere