Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A sudden change of events or reversal of circumstances, especially in a literary work.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a reversal of fortune; a sudden change in circumstances
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a sudden and unexpected change of fortune or reverse of circumstances (especially in a literary work)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Were Cantor's failure and Murdoch's peripeteia inevitable?
HuffPost Radio: Both Sides Now: Conservatives Play Defense on Debt Ceiling and Murdoch HuffPost Radio 2011
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Were Cantor's failure and Murdoch's peripeteia inevitable?
HuffPost Radio: Both Sides Now: Conservatives Play Defense on Debt Ceiling and Murdoch HuffPost Radio 2011
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Were Cantor's failure and Murdoch's peripeteia inevitable?
HuffPost Radio: Both Sides Now: Conservatives Play Defense on Debt Ceiling and Murdoch HuffPost Radio 2011
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Were Cantor's failure and Murdoch's peripeteia inevitable?
HuffPost Radio: Both Sides Now: Conservatives Play Defense on Debt Ceiling and Murdoch HuffPost Radio 2011
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I see what you're saying, but it certainly did cause me to reevaluate my initial impressions of the plot, which kinda-sorta feels like a twist, or at least some form of elaborate peripeteia.
"Serpent!" screamed the Pigeon. greygirlbeast 2010
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Were Cantor's failure and Murdoch's peripeteia inevitable?
HuffPost Radio: Both Sides Now: Conservatives Play Defense on Debt Ceiling and Murdoch HuffPost Radio 2011
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He destroys the wonderful peripeteia of the original story, jettisons the power of the over-the-top surreal insanity by bestowing it on a minor character, and replaces it all with a fatalistic conclusion to a psycho-drama.
Dread 2010
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Levin (1929-2007), best known for his novels "Rosemary's Baby" (1967) and "The Stepford Wives" (1972), had obviously mastered the principles of Aristotle's "Poetics," for Deathtrap abounds in "peripeteia" or sudden reversals of fortune.
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If the hammam were a Greek tragedy, and in some ways I think it is, this man's entry is the peripeteia, the moment of dramatic reversal that marks the beginning of catharsis.
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We were instructed that life, like Greek plays, features peripeteia, or reversals of fortune.
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Aristotle called the moment of maximum intensity peripeteia — which translates to reversal — and named the aftermath catharsis, the release of emotional energy.
Collapse, Renewal and the Rope of History Angus Hervey 2022
qroqqa commented on the word peripeteia
It's not often that I can't spell a word I should know, so here's a memorandum. 'Peripeteia' is from pet- "fall" (as in 'apoptosis' and 'diptote', both with the zero grade), and mnemonically it's what befalls characters in a narrative. It has no relation to what was confusing me, 'peripatetic' from pat- "walk, tread".
August 14, 2008
ruzuzu commented on the word peripeteia
Thank you, qroqqa! I was wondering about that, too.
April 11, 2011