The story
- French · borrowed frombelles-lettres“fine writings”
- English todaybelles-lettres
Borrowed from French belles-lettres (“fine writings”), a parallel construction with the beaux arts (“fine arts”). Littré considered the belles-lettres to embrace grammar, rhetoric, and poetry. Sense embracing all of the humanities under the influence of Latin literae humaniores.
Words from the same roots
Frenchbelles-lettres all →
belletrism
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.