volte-face

Borrowed from French volte-face.

• IPA^(key): /vɒltˈfæs/, /-ˈfɑːs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æs

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, page 9:

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

   • 1983, James C. H. Shen, “Beginnings of Endings”, in Robert Myers, editor, The U.S. & Free China: How the U.S. Sold Out Its Ally‎^[1], Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books Ltd., →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, 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^[2]:

     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.

• volte face

• volte-face on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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

• IPA^(key): /vɔl.t(ə).fas/

• Audio:

  (file)

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

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