aperçu

See also: apercu

English

WOTD – 22 November 2011

Etymology

Borrowed from French aperçu.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌa.pɛːˈsjuː/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌæ.pɚˈsuː/

Noun

aperçu (plural aperçus)

1. A clever insight.
   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 7, in The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 143:

     I insisted on how his opinion mattered, and developed and construed his platitudes into aperçus he was far from entertaining himself.

   • 2001 December, David Brooks, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible”, in Michael Kelly, editor, The Atlantic‎^[1], Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-09-04:

     In this place you can go to a year's worth of dinner parties without hearing anyone quote an aperçu he first heard on Charlie Rose.

   • 2004 November 10, Manohla Dargis, “Do you hear sleigh bells? Nah, just Tom Hanks and some train”, in The New York Times‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-08-11:

     Every so often a hobo (Mr. [Tom] Hanks again) materializes to dispense a cryptic aperçu to the boy, maybe because the child is the father of the man or because the film's envelope-pushing gobbled up most of the budget and there was only enough money for one star.

   • 2009 February 22, Maureen Dowd, “Dark dark dark”, in The New York Times‎^[3], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     President [Barack] Obama disdains sound bites, and he does not have Bill Clinton's talent for reducing the abstruse to aperçus.

     (Can we archive this URL?)

   • 2014 October 31, Ben Brantley, “When the head leads the heart”, in The New York Times‎^[4], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-01-21:

     While we know – because the script tells us so – that the people we are watching are in love and in pain and in trouble, they never come across as more than dispensers of sparkling aperçus.

   • 2022, China Miéville, chapter 3, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →ISBN:

     These paragraphs contain many freighted aperçus, formulations over which debates continue to rage, such as that ‘[t]he executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (1.12); […]

2. An outline or summary; also, words that summarize.

Translations

clever insight

• Finnish: kiteytys (fi), tiivistelmä (fi), yhteenveto (fi)
• German: Aperçu (de) n

summary

• Finnish: kiteytys (fi), yleiskatsaus
• Hindi: सिंहावलोकन (hi) ? (sĩhāvlokan)

Anagrams

• earcup

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /a.pɛʁ.sy/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

aperçu m (plural aperçus)

1. glance, glimpse
2. insight, hint

   L’avocat a donné au public un aperçu de la cause. ― The lawyer gave the public an insight into the case.

3. rough estimate

   Donnez-moi un aperçu des dépenses que j’aurai à faire. ― Give me an estimate of the expenses that I would have.

4. sketch, outline, summary
5. view
6. overview

   Ce que je vous dis là n’est qu’un aperçu de la question. ― What I say here is just an overview of the issue.

7. preview

   Il y a dans cet ouvrage des aperçus très fins, mais rien n’est développé. ― There are fine previews in this book, but nothing developed.

Participle

aperçu (feminine aperçue, masculine plural aperçus, feminine plural aperçues)

1. past participle of apercevoir

Interjection

aperçu

1. (nautical) aye, aye

Further reading

• “aperçu”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.