aperçu
Americannoun
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a hasty glance; a glimpse.
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an immediate estimate or judgment; perception; insight.
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an outline or summary.
noun
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an outline; summary
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an insight
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of aperçu
First recorded in 1825–30; from French: literally, “perceived”; past participle of the verb apercevoir
Explanation
An apercu is a brief, clever review or summation of something. If your synopsis of last week's episode of your favorite TV show is funny and sharp, you can call it an apercu. Sometimes an apercu is simply a witty comment or a clever anecdote: "He is so fun at parties because he always comes up with such brilliant apercus." The word is often spelled with a cedilla, a French accent that softens the C so that it's pronounced like an S: aperçu. The word is from the French apercevoir, "to perceive."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
I guess we could fault Caleb for this aperçu, but in a novel that purports to be about the slippery idea of authorship, let’s blame Lipstein.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 18, 2022
“It’s an aperçu of Alex Trebek, human being. What is he like? What has he done? How did he screw up? Things like that.”
From Slate ● Jul. 22, 2020
If I were to recast Montaigne's aperçu it would be thus: "Mistrust a man who takes games too seriously; it means he may be incapable of taking life seriously enough."
From The Guardian ● Sep. 24, 2010
A little aperçu into your field equipment and methods would be of great interest.
From New York Times ● Sep. 10, 2010
He called it an aperçu, "a revelation springing up in the inner man that gives him a hint of his likeness to God."
From The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 05 Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English by Various
Reproduced in Pinckney’s new memoir, “Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan,” those aperçus, which belong in some kind of literary hall of fame, include:
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2022
But Jared’s unforced drollery and naive aperçus resemble nothing so much as late-period Vonnegut.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 1, 2020
Poniewozik contrives many memorable aperçus to indicate Trump’s shape-shifting over the decades, in response to his environment.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 4, 2019
But she is also capable of arresting aperçus: “There is no writer more poetically articulate about irritation than Updike.”
From New York Times ● May 18, 2018
The title of this fine little book is open, perhaps, to some objection: the contents are not, as a rule, either maxims or reflections, but aperçus; and that is what they should be called.
From The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; On Human Nature by Saunders, T. Bailey (Thomas Bailey)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
