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Peripeteia
Definitions
- 1 A sudden reversal of fortune as a plot point in Classical tragedy. countable, uncountable
- 2 a sudden and unexpected change of fortune or reverse of circumstances (especially in a literary work) wordnet
- 3 Any sudden change in circumstances; a crisis. broadly, countable, uncountable
"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."
- 4 A turning point in psychosocial development. countable, uncountable
"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”).
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