Meaning of peripeteia | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A sudden reversal of fortune as a plot point in Classical tragedy.
   countable, uncountable
2. Any sudden change in circumstances; a crisis.
   broadly, countable, uncountable
3. A turning point in psychosocial development.
   countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Once more I was a man in a myth, incapable of understanding it, but somehow aware that understanding it meant it must continue⟳, however sinister its peripeteia.”

“They were to bestride the Algerian scene like⟳ demigods until the tragic peripeteia of 1961 […]”

“The visual moment whose consequences Freud began to ponder in the essay on the phallic stage⟳ has evolved into a peripeteia: "Some day or other it happens that the child whose own⟳ penis is such a proud possession obtains a sight of the genital parts of a little girl; he must then become⟳ convinced of the absence of a penis in a creature so like⟳ himeself. With this, however, the loss of his own⟳ penis becomes imaginable, and the threat of castration achieves its delayed effect."”

CEFR level