TABLEAU (tableaux)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected form: tableaux   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does tableau mean? 

• TABLEAU (noun)
  The noun TABLEAU has 2 senses:

1. a group of people attractively arranged (as if in a painting)

2. any dramatic scene

  Familiarity information: TABLEAU used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TABLEAU (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A group of people attractively arranged (as if in a painting)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

tableau; tableau vivant

Hypernyms ("tableau" is a kind of...):

arrangement (an orderly grouping (of things or persons) considered as a unit; the result of arranging)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Any dramatic scene

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("tableau" is a kind of...):

aspect; panorama; prospect; scene; view; vista (the visual percept of a region)

 Context examples 

Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded "the tableau of the whole;" whereupon the curtain again descended.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Such plays and tableaux, such sleigh rides and skating frolics, such pleasant evenings in the old parlor, and now and then such gay little parties at the great house.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Miss Kate put up her glass, and, having taken a survey of the little tableau before her, shut her sketch book, saying with condescension, You've a nice accent and in time will be a clever reader.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)