Wiktionary

volte-face

See also: volte face

English

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WOTD – 15 July 2011

Etymology

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Borrowed from French volte-face.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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volte-face (plural volte-faces)

  1. 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.
  2. (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.

Alternative forms

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Translations

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Further reading

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French

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Etymology

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Calque of Italian volta-faccia, itself from voltare (“to turn”) + faccia (“face”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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volte-face f (plural volte-face or volte-faces)

  1. U-turn; about face (act of turning round 180 degrees)
  2. (figuratively) U-turn; volte-face

See also

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Further reading

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Indonesian

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Etymology

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Unadapted borrowing from French volte-face (“U-turn”)

Noun

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volte-face

  1. volte-face, about-face, U-turn: a reversal of attitude, policy, or principle.

Further reading

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