volte-face

See also: volte face

English edit

WOTD – 15 July 2011

Etymology edit

Borrowed from French volte-face.

Pronunciation edit

IPA^(key): /vɒltˈfæs/, /-ˈfɑːs/
Audio (Southern England) (file)
Rhymes: -æs

Noun edit

volte-face (plural volte-faces)

A reversal of attitude, policy, or principle.
Synonyms: about-face, U-turn
- 1921, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “Psychoanalysis vs. Morality”, in Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Seltzer, →OCLC, page 9:
  Psychoanalysis has sprung many surprises on us, performed more than one volte face before our indignant eyes.
- 1983, James C. H. Shen, “Beginnings of Endings”, in Robert Myers, editor, The U.S. & Free China: How the U.S. Sold Out Its Ally‎^[1], Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books Ltd., →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 6:
  Then, on July 15, 1971, came Nixon's sudden announcement that Kissinger had just made a secret trip to Peking and that he himself had accepted Chou En-lai's invitation to visit the Chinese mainland sometime before May, 1972. This was instantly interpreted in chancelleries all over the world as a sign that the United States was about to execute a volte-face in its China policy.
- 2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My Weirdest and Wackiest Rover Yet”, in Rail, pages 67–68:
  My next stop is Oxford, which has also grown with the addition of new platforms to accommodate the Chiltern Railways service to London via Bicester – although, short sightedly, the planned electrification from Paddington was canned. Evidence of the volte-face can be seen along the line at places such as Radley, where mast piles are already sunk or lie discarded at the lineside.
- 2022 June 1, Joseph Stiglitz, “Davos 2022 meeting was a missed opportunity over globalisation”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:
  For one-time advocates of unfettered globalisation, this volte-face has resulted in cognitive dissonance, because the new suite of policy proposals implies that longstanding rules of the international trading system will be bent or broken.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:volte-face.
(literature, chiefly poetry) A dramatic change in mood or tone.
Shakespeare often used volte-faces in the rhyming couplets at the end of his sonnets.