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volte-face

[volt-fahs, vohlt-; Fr. vawlt^uh-fas]

Origin

Volte www.ask.com/Volte Search Volte Q&A for Volte

noun, plural volte-face.

a turnabout, especially a reversal of opinion or policy.

Origin:
1810–20; < French < Italian voltafaccia, equivalent to volta turn (see volt²) + faccia face

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Volte-face is always a great word to know.

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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.

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

volte-face (ˈvɒltˈfɑːs)

—n , pl volte-face
1.	a reversal, as in opinion or policy
2.	a change of position so as to look, lie, etc, in the opposite direction

[C19: from French, from Italian volta-faccia, from volta a turn + faccia face]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

volte-face

a reversal of opinion, 1819, from Fr., from It. volta faccia, lit. "turn face," from volta, imper. of voltare "to turn" (from V.L. *volvita, from L. volvere "to roll;" see vulva) + faccia (see face).

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Matching Quote

"Fives, and tens,
Threes and fours and twelves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven."

-D.H. Lawrence

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