roman a clef

plural ro·mans à clef

[raw-mahn za kle] . French.

a novel that represents historical events and characters under the guise of fiction.

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World English Dictionary

roman à clef (rɔmɑ̃ a kle)

—n , pl romans à clef
	a novel in which real people are depicted under fictitious names

[literally: novel with a key]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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Roman a clef is always a great word to know.

So is gobo. Does it mean:

a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

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American Heritage

Cultural Dictionary

roman à clef [(roh-mahn ah klay)]

A novel in which actual people and places are disguised as fictional characters. Roman à clef is French for “novel with a key.”

Matching Quote

"Byron and Elvis Presley look alike, especially in strong-nosed Greek profile. In Glenarvon, a roman a clef about her affair with Byron, Caroline Lamb says of her heroine's first glimpse of him, "The proud curl of the upper lip expressed haughtiness and bitter contempt." Presley's sneer was so emblematic that he joked about it. In a 1968 television special, he twitched his mouth and murmured, to audience laughter, "I've got something on my lip." The Romantic curling lip is aristocratic disdain: Presley is still called "the King," testimony to the ritual needs of a democratic populace. As revolutionary sexual personae, Byron and Presley had early and late styles: brooding menace, then urbane magnanimity. Their everyday manners were manly and gentle. Presley had a captivating soft-spoken charm. The Byronic hero, says Peter Thorslev, is "invariably courteous toward women." Byron and Presley were world-shapers, conduits of titanic force, yet they were deeply emotional and sentimental in a feminine sense."

-Camille Paglia

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roman a clef

ro·man à clef