volte-face

volte-face

See also: volte face

English

WOTD – 15 July 2011

Etymology

Borrowed from French volte-face.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /vɒltˈfæs/, /-ˈfɑːs/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

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 975191, page 9:

     Psychoanalysis has sprung many surprises on us, performed more than one volte face before our indignant eyes.

   • 1983, Shen, James C. H., “Beginnings of Endings”, in Robert Myers, editor, The U.S. & Free China: How the U.S. Sold Out Its Ally‎, Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books Ltd., →ISBN, LCCN 82-13884, OCLC 8708915, 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:

     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

• volte face

Translations

reversal of attitude, policy, or principle

Arabic: please add this translation if you can Armenian: կտրուկ շրջադարձ (ktruk šrǰadarj) Chinese: Mandarin: 变卦 (zh) (biàn guà) Czech: obrat o 180 stupňů m Danish: kovending c Dutch: draai (nl) m, volte-face (nl) f Finnish: takinkääntö (fi) French: volte-face (fr) f, demi-tour (fr) m, marche arrière (fr) f, revirement (fr) m German: Kehrtwende (de) f Hindi: please add this translation if you can Italian: voltafaccia (it) m, voltagabbana (it) m, traditore (it) m, banderuola (it) m, voltacasacca m Japanese: please add this translation if you can Korean: please add this translation if you can Portuguese: reviravolta f Russian: круто́й поворо́т (krutój povorót), резкая переме́на (rezkaja pereména) Spanish: media vuelta f Vietnamese: trở mặt (vi)

Further reading

• volte-face on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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French

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /vɔl.t(ə).fas/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

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

• tête à queue
• tête-à-queue

 

Further reading

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