tout ensemble

English edit

Etymology edit

French tout ensemble, literally "all together".

Noun edit

tout ensemble

The overall appearance or impression, especially of a work of art.
- 1790, Jane Austen, “Jack and Alice”, in Juvenilia:
  The singularity of his appearance, the beams which darted from his eyes, the brightness of his Wit, and the whole tout ensemble of his person had subdued the hearts of so many of the young Ladies […] .
- 1849, Edgar Allan Poe, Landor's Cottage:
  On this peninsula stood a dwelling-house. […] [I]ts tout ensemble struck me with the keenest sense of combined novelty and propriety—in a word, of poetry.
- 1892, “Items of Interest”, in A[mant] H[enry] Ohmann-Dumesnil, editor, Medical Review. A Weekly Retrospect of Medicine and Surgery., volume XXV, St. Louis, Mo.: Medical Review Association, page 415, column 2:
  The Same Woman.—She is the same woman you have had to deal with in your professional career, dear doctor (Gleaner). Has the same begabled frame, the same hooked beak, the same thin, neutral tinted lips, the same parchmental skin, the same supra-lateral nasal mole, the same hammer dressed saw-file voice, the same fearful masculo-feminine vesicatory tout ensemble.
- 1897, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 20, in St. Ives:
  'Tis the tout ensemble I must see: the whole as opposed to the details.
- 1915, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 1, in The Double Traitor:
  A variety of uniforms, worn by the officers at different tables, gave colour and distinction to a tout ensemble with which even Norgate could find no fault.
- 2008 July 7, Lisanne Renner, “Art & Design: Big Touch-Up for the Blue and the Gray”, in New York Times, retrieved 15 July 2012:
  The National Park Service and its private partner, the Gettysburg Foundation, have been reconstructing the diorama and other elements of the colossal artwork to bring back the tout ensemble that made veterans cry when the cyclorama opened in 1884.

Translations edit

overall appearance or impression

Finnish: yleisvaikutelma

References edit

“tout ensemble”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.