peripeteia
/pɛɹɪpɪˈtiə/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.09 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "If we recoil with the consternation of surprise at such a conclusion, it is no defense to invoke as parallel the peripeteia by which Euripides in his Ion leads us to expect one ending yet effects another."
- "Once more I was a man in a myth, incapable of understanding it, but somehow aware that understanding it meant it must continue, however sinister its peripeteia."
- "They were to bestride the Algerian scene like demigods until the tragic peripeteia of 1961 […]"
- "The visual moment whose consequences Freud began to ponder in the essay on the phallic stage has evolved into a peripeteia: "Some day or other it happens that the child whose own penis is such a proud possession obtains a sight of the genital parts of a little girl; he must then become convinced of the absence of a penis in a creature so like himeself. With this, however, the loss of his own penis becomes imaginable, and the threat of castration achieves its delayed effect.""
Etymology
From Late Latin peripetia, and its source Ancient Greek περιπέτεια (peripéteia), from περιπίπτω (peripíptō, “to change suddenly”), from περί (perí, “round, around, about”) + the stem of πίπτω (píptō, “to fall”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /pɛɹɪpɪˈtiə/
- British English: /pɛɹɪpɪˈtɪə/