bonne bouche

English

Alternative forms

• bonne-bouche

Etymology

Coined in English from French bonne bouche (“agreeable taste”, literally “good mouth(ful)”).

Noun

bonne bouche (plural bonnes bouches)

1. A gourmet titbit.
   • 1807 April 18, Washington Irving, “To Correspondents”, in Salmagundi‎^[1], G. P. Putnam's sons, New York, pages 183–184:

     It is a melancholy truth that this same New York, though the most charming, pleasant, polished, and praiseworthy city under the sun, and in a word the bonne bouche of the universe, is most shockingly ill-natured and sarcastic, and wickedly given to all manner of backslidings ; for which we are very sorry, indeed.

   • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty […], 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 378:

     Just then the desserts, mere bonnes bouches in foot-wide puddles of pink coulis, were set in front of them.

2. (euphemistic) The vagina.
   • 1941, Henry Miller, Under the Roofs of Paris (Opus Pistorum), New York: Grove Press, published 1983, page 27:

     I rub her bush with my cheek and my chin, tickle her bonne-bouche with my tongue.

Further reading

• “bonne bouche”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC, page 622.
• “bonne-bouche n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present