mauvais quart d'heure

plural mauvais quarts d'heure

1. UKA brief unpleasant period; a bad yet quick experience.

   Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d’heure made up of exquisite moments.

   1893, Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, published 1906, act II, page 74

   3 more examples

   It was a mauvais quart d’heure, the Christmas holidays of ’96, and poor Willy Phillips never lived to see the fight recovered.

   1898 April 13, Henry Adams, “[Letter]”, in Ernest Samuels, editor, Henry Adams: Selected Letters, published 1992, →ISBN, page 343

   Many Guardian readers will have suffered a mauvais quart d'heure when they found out that their views on the Gulf war were closer to Peter's than Christopher's.

   2003 November 1, Nicholas Lezard, “More than the usual authorial suspects”, in The Guardian

   Kate Fall, Cameron’s deputy chief of staff, has an initial mauvais quart d’heure when all she is offered is the chance to run Comic Relief […]

   2020 December 17, Rosemary Hill, “Gosh, what am I like?”, in London Review of Books, volume 42, number 24