L'esprit de l'escalier
Script error: No such module "For".
L'esprit de l'escalier or Script error: No such module "Lang". (Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en,[1] Script error: No such module "IPA".; Template:Lit) is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late.
Origin
This name for the phenomenon comes from French encyclopedist and philosopher Denis Diderot's description of such a situation in his "Paradoxe sur le comédien" ("Paradox of the Actor").[2] During a dinner at the home of statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, "a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and doesn't come to himself again until at the bottom of the stairs" ("Script error: No such module "Lang".").
In this case, "the bottom of the stairs" refers to the architecture of the kind of Script error: No such module "Lang". or mansion to which Diderot had been invited. In such houses, the reception rooms were on the Script error: No such module "Lang"., one floor above the ground floor.[3] To have reached the bottom of the stairs means to have definitively left the gathering.
In other languages
An older English term that was sometimes used for this meaning is afterwit; it is used, for example, in James Joyce's Ulysses (Chapter 9).
The Yiddish Script error: No such module "Lang". ("staircase words")[4] and the German loan translation Treppenwitz express the same idea as Script error: No such module "Lang".. However, in contemporary German Script error: No such module "Lang". has an additional meaning: it refers to events or facts that seem to contradict their own background or context.[5] The frequently used phrase Script error: No such module "Lang". ("staircase joke of world history") derives from the title of a book by that name by Template:Ill[6] (1882; much expanded 1895) and means "irony of history" or "paradox of history".[7][8]
In Russian, the notion is close to the native Russian saying "Script error: No such module "Lang"." (Script error: No such module "Lang"., "Our hindsight is strong").
The French expression is also used in French. English speakers sometimes call this "escalator wit" or "staircase wit".[9]
See also
References
External links
- ↑ "esprit de l'escalier"Template:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore (US) and Template:Cite dictionary
- ↑ Paradoxe sur le comédien, 1773, remanié en 1778; Diderot II, Classiques Larousse 1934, p. 56
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Treppenwitz, DUDEN – Das große Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden, Mannheim 2000. "Bedeutung: Vorfall, der wie ein schlechter Scherz wirkt." [Meaning: event which looks like a bad joke]
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Langenscheidts Großes Schulwörterbuch Deutsch-Englisch, Berlin, München 1977
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".