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Apr 6, 2011
This week's themeWords borrowed from French This week's words soubrette beau geste volte-face entrepot gris-gris The gift of words Send a gift subscription In less than a minute! 
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with Anu Gargvolte-face
PRONUNCIATION:
(volt-FAHS)
MEANING:
noun:
A reversal in policy or opinion; about-face.
ETYMOLOGY:
From French, from Italian voltafaccia, from voltare (to turn), from Vulgar
Latin volvitare, frequentative of Latin volvere (to turn) + faccia (face).
Earliest documented use: 1819.
USAGE:
"The possibility of a flotation was a remarkable volte-face for Standard
Life."Carmel Crimmins; Standard Life Pays Its Former Chief More Than £1m; Irish Examiner (Cork, Ireland); Mar 1, 2004. "Not too long after the panels indicted the former Senate President, the Senate made a volte-face on its action, dumped the documents, and cleared those indicted of any wrongdoing!" Senate and Unending Bribery Scandals; Daily Times (Lagos, Nigeria); Feb 19, 2004. See more usage examples of volte-face in Vocabulary.com's dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
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