My bete noire are people who needlessly take the lives of animals for sport.

[alpacinou]

I want to say someone hates someone/something. Can I use 'bet noir'? Are these okay?

1. My bete noire are people who needlessly take the lives of animals for sport and take trophy photos to flaunt their conquest.
2. Jasmine's bete noire is teenagers carrying speakers and blasting rap music in public.
3. Her boss's bete noire is being sloppy and making excuses for it.
4. The temperamental HR manager became the bete noire of the employees, with his unpredictable behaviour and constant badgering of them for taking leave.
5. My bete noire is drivers who dangle their hand out of the car window while they drive.
6. Her bete noire is seeing people queue up at cinemas to watch mindless blockbuster films.
7. Jane's neighbour has become her bete noire as he is very nosy and annoying.

 

[Rover_KE]

Most of them are natural, but you should take the trouble to put a circumflex accent on the first e.

One way to do this is to google bete noire and you'll find many examples of bête noire which you can copy and paste like I just did.

 

[emsr2d2]

In sentence 1 you used "bête noire" followed by "are". That's not right. Either use "bête noire" (singular) followed by "is" or "bêtes noires" (plural) followed by "are".

 

[Skrej]

I've never actually encountered the term before reading this thread. After looking it up, it seems to be synonymous with 'pet peeve', which is what I'd expect to hear in AmE.

This Ngram suggests that the term has always been used much more in BrE than AmE.

What I find curious though is the sudden nosedive in usage over both variants starting just after 2000. It of course took a sharper dive in BrE since it was used more, but it's still odd to see such a precipitous decline in two variants at the same time. Something happened to make it very unpopular....

 

[alpacinou]

I've never actually encountered the term before reading this thread. After looking it up, it seems to be synonymous with 'pet peeve', which is what I'd expect to hear in AmE.

This Ngram suggests that the term has always been used much more in BrE than AmE.

What I find curious though is the sudden nosedive in usage over both variants starting just after 2000. It of course took a sharper dive in BrE since it was used more, but it's still odd to see such a precipitous decline in two variants at the same time. Something happened to make it very unpopular....

If I replace bete noire with pet peeve, would all those examples in the first post be okay?

 

[emsr2d2]

If I replace "bête noire" with "pet peeve", would all those examples in the first post be okay?

You've been here long enough to know that you need to mark out words/phrases you're asking about in some way. You can put them in quotation marks (as I have done above) or italicise them.

"Pet peeve" would work in sentences 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7.
It doesn't work in sentence 1 because you'd still have the singular "pet peeve" followed by the plural "are".
It doesn't work in sentence 3 because you haven't given something that annoys the boss about someone else. It says that the boss is sloppy and makes excuses.

 

[Skrej]

For me, 'pet peeve' doesn't work in #4 or #7, because we don't use 'pet peeve' with people. Otherwise, I find the rest acceptable as long as the agreement error already mentioned in #1 is resolved.

I read #3 as the boss's pet peeve being others doing sloppy work and making excuses, which does work.