tableau

[ta-bloh, tab-loh]

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR tableau ON THESAURUS.COM

noun, plural tab·leaux [ta-blohz, tab-lohz] /tæˈbloʊz, ˈtæb loʊz/, tab·leaus.

a picture, as of a scene.

a picturesque grouping of persons or objects; a striking scene.

a representation of a picture, statue, scene, etc., by one or more persons suitably costumed and posed.

Solitaire. the portion of a layout to which one may add cards according to suit or denomination.

Origin of tableau

1690–1700; < French: board, picture, Middle French tablel, diminutive of table table

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for tableau

illustration, spectacle, representation, picture, view

Examples from the Web for tableau

Contemporary Examples of tableau

A first-rank boulevardier in the 1960s tableau, his wives included one Rita Hayworth.
Inside North America’s First Islamic Art Museum
Shinan Govani
September 16, 2014
Now those are destroyed, too, and the animals are strewn about, bloating and stinking, as if in a tableau of “Guernica.”
Inside the Gaza Schoolyard Massacre
Jesse Rosenfeld
July 26, 2014
The tableau of five candidates on stage at first seemed more like a set of high school stereotypes than a political debate.
Iowa GOP Senate Debate Shows Divides
Ben Jacobs
April 25, 2014
Everybody else was screaming; the noise was overwhelming, the tableau so terrifying that my brain locked up.
Don’t Shoot! Why Being a Hero Is Not That Easy
Dan Baum
March 12, 2013
It contributed to the tableau of grievances inherited by every refugee.
Old Problems and New Realities
Ahmed Moor
November 22, 2012

Historical Examples of tableau

Power behind the throne, what a tableau: Sumner and Lincoln!
Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863
Adam Gurowski
We all stood stock-still for a minute, like folks in a tableau.
Cape Cod Stories
Joseph C. Lincoln
Has existence only to unroll a tableau, every detail of which is graven on my heart?
Gerald Fitzgerald
Charles James Lever
Think of a tableau with Swift, Addison, &c, at Templeton's leve!
Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II (of II)
Edmund Downey
Alice cannot forget her part in that Bombay tableau or in those lake promptings.
Oswald Langdon
Carson Jay Lee

British Dictionary definitions for tableau

tableau

noun plural -leaux (-ləʊ, -ləʊz) or -leaus

See tableau vivant

a pause during or at the end of a scene on stage when all the performers briefly freeze in position

any dramatic group or scene

logic short for semantic tableau

Word Origin for tableau

C17: from French, from Old French tablel a picture, diminutive of table

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for tableau

1690s, "a picturesque or graphic description or picture," from French tableau "picture, painting," from Old French table "slab, writing tablet" (see table (n.)) + diminutive suffix -eau, from Latin -ellus. Hence tableau-vivant (1817) "person or persons silent and motionless, enacting a well-known scene, incident, painting, etc.," popular 19c. parlor game, literally "living picture."