tableau vivant
Americannoun
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.
The typical Harding song is not a legible narrative so much as a tableau vivant, with strange, unknowable characters posed in the middle of a scene that is fully realized if never entirely explained.
From New York Times ● Mar. 25, 2022
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
The vision God bless us every one, a Tudorbethan tableau vivant of bronzed meats, spice and familial merriment.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 23, 2018
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
And in this way they continued like two figures in a tableau vivant, till the entrance of other parties broke the spell which thus had fixed them in their positions.
From Gryll Grange by Peacock, Thomas Love
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.
