tableau
[ta-bloh, tab-loh]
- 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.
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Origin of tableau
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for tableau
Contemporary Examples
A first-rank boulevardier in the 1960s tableau, his wives included one Rita Hayworth.
Now those are destroyed, too, and the animals are strewn about, bloating and stinking, as if in a tableau of “Guernica.”
The tableau of five candidates on stage at first seemed more like a set of high school stereotypes than a political debate.
Everybody else was screaming; the noise was overwhelming, the tableau so terrifying that my brain locked up.
It contributed to the tableau of grievances inherited by every refugee.
Historical Examples
Power behind the throne, what a tableau: Sumner and Lincoln!
Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863Adam Gurowski
We all stood stock-still for a minute, like folks in a tableau.
Cape Cod StoriesJoseph C. Lincoln
Has existence only to unroll a tableau, every detail of which is graven on my heart?
Gerald FitzgeraldCharles James Lever
Think of a tableau with Swift, Addison, &c, at Templeton's leve!
Alice cannot forget her part in that Bombay tableau or in those lake promptings.
Oswald LangdonCarson Jay Lee
tableau
- 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
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Word Origin
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
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Word Origin and History for tableau
n.
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."
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper