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Enfant terrible

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(pronounced ah^N-fah^N-te-reeb-luh. Note that the ^N does not represent a consonant, and the ah is nasalized. Thus, the syllables ah^N and fah^N rhyme with the last syllable in “rapprochement.” The plural, enfants terribles, has the same pronunciation as the singular.)  noun

Definition

1. an unruly or obstreperous child whose actions or utterances cause embarrassment. 2. a person whose indiscretions or outrageous acts or ideas embarrass, disturb, or shock others. 3. someone young and successful (and usually controversial) who is extremely unconventional, creative, or (as in the arts) avant-garde.

Main Example

• Not a day passes without news of yet another wholesale massacre of precious wildlife, all to feed China’s gluttonous and ever-growing demand for rare animal parts. For instance, just this morning (January 10, 2013), Yahoo! reported that a Chinese company had offered sophisticated arms to a rebel group in exchange for rhino horns from India’s Kaziranga sanctuary, the world’s only habitat of the one-horned rhino. Yesterday, January 9, Kenya reported its worst single poaching incident ever--the slaughter of eleven elephants for their tusks, carried out within just a few hours by “highly professional” killers. A twelfth elephant--a few months old calf--was crushed when its dying mother fell on top of it. And the day before that, stealth photographs taken by British photojournalist Alex Hofford, showing thousands of shark fins drying on a Hong Kong rooftop--the product of another threatened species and used to satisfy China’s craving for shark fin soup--were flashed around the world.
  
  The rapidly increasing purchasing power of China’s burgeoning middle class, thanks to globalization, and the Chinese government’s own reprehensible actions, such as sharply bolstering (rather than stamping out) the nation’s “carved ivory” industry, are exacerbating the problem exponentially.
  
  In the absence of any high-profile denunciations of the above goings-on by leaders of other nations, no doubt because of the Asian giant’s commercial heft, the only hope for the survival of elephants and many other valued species facing extinction seems to lie in the following: Some Chinese American and other moralists must band together and become the enfants terribles of wildlife conservation. Their singular objective? Compelling China’s leaders into taking draconian measures to bring about a precipitous decline in the demand for ivory and other products from threatened animal species.
  
  Perhaps the following quote, one of President Kennedy’s favorites and attributed by him to Dante, will galvanize some “Words of the Month” readers into forceful action toward saving our natural patrimony: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality."

Workplace Examples

• Martin, who is by far the youngest member of our top management team, is also the most audacious. Since joining the company, he has done lots of unconventional things and really shaken up the establishment. One enfant terrible of a guy!
• It seems that in Vice President Joe Biden and former Bush advisor Carl Rove, each of whom is known to occasionally utter something that shocks members of the opposing political party, both the Democrats and the Republicans have at least one prominent person who can be categorized as an enfant terrible. What do you think?

Other Examples

• John McEnroe, once the enfant terrible of international tennis who often berated linesman and heatedly argued with umpires; Carlos Ghosn, the enfant terrible of the auto industry who rescued Nissan from near meltdown by taking unusually tough steps including the firing of thousands of employees and thus defying long held Japanese taboos
• composer Arnold Schonberg, also known as “the father of atonality” and who is regarded variously as the “arch rebel” and the enfant terrible of modern music, becoming the target of derision and condemnation during his lifetime
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, seemingly relishing his role as an enfant terrible by frequently issuing shocking statements including one in which he loudly proclaimed that Israel should be wiped off the map
• in Hollywood, where movie studios typically wield enormous clout over directors, Peter Jackson of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy fame being branded the enfant terrible of that industry by extracting agreements from major studios that are extremely unusual and heavily slanted in his favor
• Silicon Valley being densely populated with startups whose founders are potential enfants terribles--entrepreneurs who have devised unconventional and even revolutionary approaches to deliver a particular product or service and, if successful, who could “shake up” their respective industrial segments

© 2014 V.J. Singal
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