dénouement
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See also: denouement
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French dénouement (“resolution”, literally “unknotting”).
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /deˈnuːmɑ̃/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
- (US) IPA(key): /ˌdeɪ.nuˈmɑnt/, /ˌdeɪ.nuˈmɑ̃/
Noun
dénouement (countable and uncountable, plural dénouements)
- (authorship, often figuratively) The conclusion or resolution of a plot; unravelling.
- 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIX, in Romance and Reality. , volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, , →OCLC, page 271:
- Emily was a great favourite with him; and he had always viewed the attachment, at whose dénouement between her and Lorraine, Lady Mandeville meant to preside, as a somewhat foolish romance.
- 2002, Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White, Canongate Books (2010), page 830:
- At last this affair is moving towards the explosive dénouement he has been craving — the revelation, the release of tension, that will shake the universe in one fierce convulsion, and then allow everything to fall back into its rightful place, restored to normality!
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:dénouement.
Translations
the conclusion or resolution of a plot
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French
Alternative forms
Etymology
From dénouer (“to unknot”) + -ment, from Middle French desnouement, from the Old French verb desnoer (“to unknot”) + -ment, from the noun neu (“knot”), itself from Latin nōdus.
Pronunciation
Noun
dénouement m (plural dénouements)
Descendants
- → English: dénouement (learned)
Further reading
- “dénouement”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.