cause celebre

plural cause celebres

1. USalternativeAlternative spelling of cause célèbre.

   Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who died this week, was a boxer in the United States. He was convicted of a 1966 triple homicide in two trials and became a cause celebre, inspiring Bob Dylan's song Hurricane.

   2014 April 24, Alex von Tunzelmann, “The Hurricane: the facts of Rubin Carter's life story are beaten to a pulp”, in The Guardian

   1 more example

   Shortly after he left Government service as a translator at the Supreme Court, the cause celebre was the assassination of a radically-minded (Sun Yat-sen supporting) school teacher in his own classroom by gunmen hired by the police chief in Canton.

   1987, Anthony Sweeting, “A MIDDLEMAN FOR ALL SEASONS: SNAPSHOTS OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MOK MAN CHEUNG AND HIS "ENGLISH MADE EASY"”, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, volume 27, page 62