dénouement

See also: denouement

English

WOTD – 14 May 2011

Alternative forms

• denouement, dénoûment

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 (plural dénouements)

1. (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

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 結局／结局 (zh) (jiéjú), 收場／收场 (zh) (shōuchǎng)

• Dutch: ontknoping (nl)
• Finnish: loppuratkaisu
• German: Auflösung (de) f
• Hungarian: végkifejlet (hu), kifejlet (hu), kimenetel (hu), kibontakozás (hu)
• Irish: dénouement, scaoileadh m
• Maori: tatūnga
• Portuguese: desfecho (pt) m
• Russian: разга́дка (ru) f (razgádka), развя́зка (ru) f (razvjázka), исхо́д (ru) m (isxód), разреше́ние (ru) n (razrešénije)
• Serbo-Croatian: rasplet (sh) m
• Spanish: desenlace (es) m
• Swedish: upplösning (sv) c
• Ukrainian: розв'язка (uk) f (rozvʺjazka)
• Welsh: diweddglo m

French

Alternative forms

• dénoûment (archaic)

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

• IPA^(key): /de.nu.mɑ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

dénouement m (plural dénouements)

1. outcome
2. (theater) dénouement
3. (finance) act of unwinding a position

Descendants

• → English: dénouement (learned)

Further reading

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