aperçu
See also: apercu
English
WOTD – 22 November 2011
Etymology
Borrowed from French aperçu.
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /ˌa.pɛːˈsjuː/
Audio (UK) (file)
- (US) IPA(key): /ˌæ.pɚˈsuː/
Noun
aperçu (plural aperçus)
- A clever insight.
- 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin, OCLC 17841394, page 143:
- I insisted on how his opinion mattered, and developed and construed his platitudes into aperçus he was far from entertaining himself.
- 2001 December, David Brooks, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible”, in The Atlantic:
- In this place you can go to a year's worth of dinner parties without hearing anyone quote an aperçu he first heard on Charlie Rose.
- 2004 November 10, Manohla Dargis, “Do You Hear Sleigh Bells? Nah, Just Tom Hanks and Some Train”, in The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331:
- "Every so often a hobo (Mr. Hanks again) materializes to dispense a cryptic aperçu to the boy, maybe because the child is the father of the man or because the film's envelope-pushing gobbled up most of the budget and there was only enough money for one star."
- 2009 February 22, Maureen Dowd, “Dark Dark Dark”, in The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331:
- President Obama disdains sound bites, and he does not have Bill Clinton’s talent for reducing the abstruse to aperçus.
- 2014 October 31, Ben Brantley, “When the Head Leads the Heart”, in The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331:
- While we know – because the script tells us so – that the people we are watching are in love and in pain and in trouble, they never come across as more than dispensers of sparkling aperçus.
- 2022, China Miéville, chapter 3, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, OCLC 1331706453:
- These paragraphs contain many freighted aperçus, formulations over which debates continue to rage, such as that ‘[t]he executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (1.12); […]
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- A summary or outline; words that summarize.
Translations
clever insight
|
summary
|
Anagrams
- earcup
French
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /a.pɛʁ.sy/
Audio (file)
Noun
aperçu m (plural aperçus)
- glance, glimpse
- insight, hint
- L’avocat a donné au public un aperçu de la cause. ― The lawyer gave the public an insight into the case.
- rough estimate
- Donnez-moi un aperçu des dépenses que j’aurai à faire. ― Give me an estimate of the expenses that I would have.
- sketch, outline, summary
- view
- overview
- Ce que je vous dis là n’est qu’un aperçu de la question. ― What I say here is an overview of the issue.
- preview
- Il y a dans cet ouvrage des aperçus très fins, mais rien n’est développé. ― There are fine previews in this book, but nothing developed.
Participle
aperçu (feminine aperçue, masculine plural aperçus, feminine plural aperçues)
- past participle of apercevoir
Interjection
aperçu
- (nautical) aye, aye
Further reading
- “aperçu”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.