Belletrists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. People who write works of literature valued for elegance of style, such as essays, criticism and poetry, rather than purely practical or technical prose
2. Authors devoted to refined literary writing, particularly essays and critical commentary produced for their aesthetic and stylistic merit
3. Writers who cultivate the art of polished prose, often in essays, criticism and other forms of elegant literary expression

Etymology: "Belletrists" is the plural of "belletrist", a writer of belles-lettres, the literature valued for beauty of form rather than for practical or scientific content. The noun was borrowed from German "Belletrist", and it was coined by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German poet and playwright. Goethe built it from the French phrase "belles-lettres" ("beautiful letters") and attached the suffix "-ist", meaning one who practises or follows something. The French phrase is the older piece of the puzzle. "Belles-lettres" entered French from the plural of "belle lettre", and in English it became the standard term for imaginative and artistic writing. Goethe's new coinage thus took a phrase that already described a category of writing and gave it a person to match, someone who devotes themselves to that kind of work.

Synonyms: literati, man of letters, woman of letters, writer, author