tête-bêche

See also: têtebêche

English

Etymology

From French tête-bêche (literally “head-to-foot”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tɛtˈbɛʃ/

Adjective

tête-bêche (not comparable)

1. (philately) Of a postage stamp, printed upside down relative to the following stamp of the same row or column.
   • 2017, David Der-wei Wang, A New Literary History of Modern China, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 704:

     Liu himself is a professional stamp collector, and in 1972 he bought a tête-bêche pair of Qing dynasty stamps from an auction in London.

Noun

tête-bêche (plural tête-bêches)

1. (publishing) A book where two texts are bound together, with one text rotated 180° relative to the other, such that when one text runs head-to-tail, the other runs tail-to-head.
   • 2011 July 28, David Barnett, “Tête-bêche books make a speculative return”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     It's an odd little confection, the tête-bêche, but it's oddly pleasing. Each author gets a fair crack of the whip, with their own cover and top-billing, and the illusion of two separate books makes a head-to-tail volume seem somehow to be good value.

See also

• dos a dos

Further reading

• tête-bêche on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• dos-à-dos binding on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Sardines laid out tête-bêche

Etymology

From tête + bêche(vet), the latter being an archaic word for "double-ended," e.g. lit bêchevet (“bed with heads at either end”), ultimately from Latin biceps (“two-headed”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tɛt.bɛʃ/

• Audio

  (file)

Adverb

tête-bêche

1. (of two people or objects) head to foot, top to tail, head-to-tail; with the head of one being placed next to the feet of the other, heads and thraws; (of one object) with a head at both ends
   • 1978, Georges Perec, chapter 38, in La Vie mode d'emploi:

     Ils décidèrent de remplacer ce valet perdu par un morceau de papier de format identique sur lequel ils dessineraient un bonhomme tête-bêche, un trèfle (♣), un grand V, et même le nom du valet.

     They decided to replace the missing jack with a piece of paper of the same size on which they would draw a man with heads pointing up and down, a club, a big J, and even the word "jack."

Noun

tête-bêche m (plural têtes-bêches)

1. (philately) a pair of tête-bêche stamps

Further reading

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