Post by t-bob on Jun 11, 2019 10:03:11 GMT -5
noun
1. a perfect comeback or witty remark that one frustratingly comes up with only when the moment for doing so has passed: Writers, by nature, tend to be people in whom l' esprit de l'escalier is a recurrent experience.
Quotes
Your esprit de l’escalier doesn’t kick in until you’re well out the door. -- Lauren Collins, "Sally Rooney Gets in Your Head," The New Yorker, December 31, 2018 Later, l'esprit de l'escalier provided Mercia with: Glad you're in agreement/I haven't yet spoken/Is that a greeting/Yes indeed—but at the time, affronted, she grabbed at a couple of garments and announced, I'll try these. -- Zoë Wicomb, October, 2014
Origin
The still very foreign phrase esprit de l'escalier first appears in English in one of the remarkable, not to say idiosyncratic, let alone cranky books by the Fowler brothers, F.W. (Francis George) and H.W. (Henry George), The King’s English (1906): “No one will know what spirit of the staircase is who is not already familiar with esprit d'escalier.” The French phrase was coined by the French philosopher and encyclopedist Denis Diderot in his Paradoxe sur le comédien (1773–77), a dramatic essay or dialogue between two actors: "l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier" (a sensitive man like me, entirely overcome by the objection made against him, loses his head and can only recover his wits at the bottom of the staircase), that is, after he has left the gathering
1. a perfect comeback or witty remark that one frustratingly comes up with only when the moment for doing so has passed: Writers, by nature, tend to be people in whom l' esprit de l'escalier is a recurrent experience.
Quotes
Your esprit de l’escalier doesn’t kick in until you’re well out the door. -- Lauren Collins, "Sally Rooney Gets in Your Head," The New Yorker, December 31, 2018 Later, l'esprit de l'escalier provided Mercia with: Glad you're in agreement/I haven't yet spoken/Is that a greeting/Yes indeed—but at the time, affronted, she grabbed at a couple of garments and announced, I'll try these. -- Zoë Wicomb, October, 2014
Origin
The still very foreign phrase esprit de l'escalier first appears in English in one of the remarkable, not to say idiosyncratic, let alone cranky books by the Fowler brothers, F.W. (Francis George) and H.W. (Henry George), The King’s English (1906): “No one will know what spirit of the staircase is who is not already familiar with esprit d'escalier.” The French phrase was coined by the French philosopher and encyclopedist Denis Diderot in his Paradoxe sur le comédien (1773–77), a dramatic essay or dialogue between two actors: "l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier" (a sensitive man like me, entirely overcome by the objection made against him, loses his head and can only recover his wits at the bottom of the staircase), that is, after he has left the gathering
