set piece

noun

an arrangement of slow-burning fireworks forming a design or composition when lighted.

Theater. a piece of scenery used as part of a stage set, as a profile or three-dimensional construction built to stand independently on the stage floor: A few set pieces simulating rocks and a fence constituted the scenery for the first act.

a work of art, literature, music, etc., having a prescribed thematic and formal structure: the set pieces of Restoration comedy.

a scene, action, or the like, having a conventional form and functioning as part of the structure of a work of art, literature, etc.

a military operation carried out according to a rigid plan.

(in a novel, narrative poem, or the like) a passage more or less extraneous to the sequence of events, introduced to supply background, color, or the like.

Origin:
1840–50

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Link To set piece

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Set piece is always a great word to know.

So is interrobang. Does it mean:

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

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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Collins

World English Dictionary

set piece

—n
1.	a work of literature, music, etc, often having a conventional or prescribed theme, intended to create an impressive effect
2.	a piece of scenery built to stand independently as part of a stage set
3.	a display of fireworks
4.	sport a rehearsed team manoeuvre, usually attempted in continuous games at a restart of play, esp when the other side has been penalized for improper play

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Example sentences

Time study the worker who does not have a disability to set piece rate for

workers with disabilities.

One set piece follows howling on the heels of another, slowly draining all

lifeblood from the claims of narrative logic.

On screen, however, the play's final splashy set piece seems neither

spontaneous nor uproarious.

The look and feel is more of a story or a set piece rather than that of a

single cartoon character.

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Matching Quote

"There are so many different kinds of people in America, with so many different boiling points, that we don't know how to fight with each other. The set piece that shapes and contains quarrels in homogeneous countries does not exist here. The Frenchman is an expert on the precise gradations of espèce de and the Italian knows exactly when to introduce the subject of his other's grave, but no American can be sure how or when another will react, so we zap each other with friendliness to neutralize potentially dangerous situations."

-Florence King