finale
Americannoun
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finales
plural
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the last piece, division, or movement of a concert, opera, or composition.
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the concluding part of any performance, course of proceedings, etc.; end.
noun
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the concluding part of any performance or presentation
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the closing section or movement of a musical composition
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of finale
1715–25; < Italian, noun use of finale (adj.) < Latin fīnālis final
Explanation
If you decide to leave the theater early to beat traffic, you’ll miss the finale — the exciting final part of a theatrical performance. Perhaps to ensure that audience members stay until the end, many musical and theatrical pieces end with an elaborate flourish known as the finale. (If it’s truly spectacular, it might even be called a “grand finale.”) Appropriately, the pronunciation of finale contains a final flourish that you just can’t miss: the letter e, which you might expect to be silent, is pronounced. The last two syllables of finale rhyme with alley.
Vocabulary lists containing finale
"Diary of a Wimpy Kid" by Jeff Kinney
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Theater - Introductory
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Theater - Middle School
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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:
Year: 2015 Compiled by: Dana Stevens Of note: Written in commemoration of the show’s finale, although the Phineas and Ferb movies that have been released since then may necessitate a reassessment.
From Slate ● Oct. 7, 2026
The following article contains spoilers for "Lanterns," including major reveals from the finale.
From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026
That hero officially takes flight in Sunday’s “Lanterns” finale.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 5, 2026
Verstappen, whose last pole and victory was at the season finale in Abu Dhabi in 2026, was 0.298 seconds quicker than Hamilton after topping all three sessions of qualifying.
From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2026
With less than a minute to go, Herrmann's orchestra launches into a dramatic finale, marking the end of the radio play.
From "Spooked!" by Gail Jarrow
No matter the strengths of AI, a chatbot cannot dream up stories with flawed characters and themes and arcs and failures and triumphs—with ambiguous finales.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
But the ones I found most interesting were finales I don’t remember encountering in Baseball Digest.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
Series finales leave viewers to fill in the blanks beyond the chapters they close.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2026
“They’re going to say he insisted. I did not insist. But I think it will be quite successful… I used to host the Apprentice finales, and we did rather well with that.”
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2025
Cora had not seen him since the first night, but she had heard every speech of the Friday-night finales.
From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead
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.
