''L'esprit de l'escalier'' or (, , ; ) is a
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
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
Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the ''Encyclopédie'' along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a promine ...
's description of such a situation in his
''Paradoxe sur le comédien'' ("Paradox on the Comedian").
[Paradoxe sur le comédien, 1773, remanié en 1778; Diderot II, Classiques Larousse 1934, p. 56] During a dinner at the home of statesman
Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker (; 30 September 1732 – 9 April 1804) was a Genevan banker and statesman who served as finance minister for Louis XVI. He was a reformer, but his innovations sometimes caused great discontent. Necker was a constitutional monarchi ...
, 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" ("").
In this case, "the bottom of the stairs" refers to the architecture of the kind of or mansion to which Diderot had been invited. In such houses, the reception rooms were on the , one floor above the ground floor. 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
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
's ''
Ulysses
Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature.
Ulysses may also refer to:
People
* Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name
Places in the United States
* Ulysses, Kansas
* Ulysse ...
'' (Chapter 9).
The Yiddish ("staircase words") and the German
loan translation
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
''
Treppenwitz'' express the same idea as . However, in contemporary German has an additional meaning: it refers to events or facts that seem to contradict their own background or context. The frequently used phrase ''Treppenwitz der Weltgeschichte'' ("staircase joke of world history") derives from the title of a book by that name by
(1882; much expanded 1895) and means "irony of history" or "paradox of history".
In Russian, the notion is close to the native Russian saying "задним умом крепки" (''zadnim umom krepki'', "Our
hindsight is strong").
The French expression is also used in French. English speakers sometimes call this "escalator wit", or "staircase wit".
See also
*
Comic timing
*
Epimetheus
*
"The Comeback" (''Seinfeld'')
*
Hindsight
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Esprit De L'escalier, L'
French words and phrases
Figures of speech
Quotations from literature
Philosophical phrases
1770s neologisms