tableau vivant
Americannoun
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tableaux vivants
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of tableau vivant
Literally, “living picture”
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.
After all, close scrutiny of a painting or a sculpture is not the aim of a tableau vivant.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2021
This tableau vivant of corseted dancers encased in seventeenth-century hoopskirts resembles a painting by Velázquez inflected with contemporary haute-couture decadence.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 15, 2019
For his debut presentation, an informal tableau vivant, she made a point of not arriving until the final minutes.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 2, 2018
“Our tableau vivant is quite vivant,” Todd Forrest, a vice president at the garden, told me as I caught my breath at the entrance to the tunnel of flowers.
From New York Times ● May 12, 2016
One can never hope to surpass the illusionary appearance of a tableau vivant.
From The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed
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.
