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.
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
In one project for Hixson’s course, which focused on socially engaged art, students dressed up to create a tableau vivant, or living picture, re-creating Raphael’s masterpiece “The School of Athens.”
From Washington Post ● Mar. 22, 2017
But if her conduct and appearance had already somewhat jarred upon their limited and precise sense of the fitness of things, what were they to think of the next little act in this tableau vivant?
From Beyond the City by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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