English

Alternative forms

• esprit de l'escalier
• esprit d'escalier
• l'esprit d'escalier

Noun

l'esprit de l'escalier ‎(uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) A conversational remark or rejoinder that only occurs to someone after the opportunity to make it has passed.
   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society 2012, p. 317:

     ‘I knew not then,’ he confessed, ‘but now I think…’ It is not necessary to follow Goad along the path taken by his esprit d'escalier to see how sheer intellectual pleasure was the driving-force behind such efforts.

Translations

Synonyms

• afterwit
• staircase wit

French

Etymology

After Diderot in Paradoxe sur le Comédien (completed in 1778, published in 1830)^[1]: "l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier"^[2] (‘a sensitive man like me, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, loses his head – and doesn't get it back again till he's at the bottom of the stairs’).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /lɛ.spʁid.lɛ.sca.lje/

Noun

l'esprit de l'escalier m ‎(uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) l'esprit de l'escalier, staircase wit

See also

• bon mot
• mot d'esprit
• mot juste

References

1. ↑ The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Oxford University Press, 2004, (ISBN 0-19-860720-2)
2. ↑ Paradoxe sur le comédien, 1773, remanié en 1778; Diderot II, Classiques Larousse 1934, p. 56