dea ex machina
UK/ˌdɪə ɛks ˈmakɪnə/
dea ex machina noun: a female deus ex machina; a providential intervention (in a story etc.) from a female force or character.
Noun
dea ex machina (plural deae ex machina)
- A female deus ex machina; a providential intervention (in a story etc.) from a female force or character.
- That's the end of her story—the Cinderella path—but it's not the end of her life, which is just as well, because the poor little rat-boy ends up in desperate need of a dea ex machina in order to save him from the terrible fate towards which the path of his story seems to be taking him.1999, Philip Pullman, “The Path Through the Wood”, in Daemon Voices, Vintage, published 2017, page 79
Forms of dea ex machina
| plural | deae ex machina |
|---|
Origin of dea ex machina
An alteration of Latin deus ex māchinā in English, substituting the masculine or epicene deus (“god”) with the feminine dea (“goddess”).
Questions about dea ex machina
- What does dea ex machina mean?
- Dea ex machina means a female deus ex machina; a providential intervention (in a story etc.) from a female force or character.
- What part of speech is dea ex machina?
- Dea ex machina is a noun.
- How do you pronounce dea ex machina?
- Dea ex machina is pronounced /ˌdɪə ɛks ˈmakɪnə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of dea ex machina?
- The plural of dea ex machina is deae ex machina.
Words near dea ex machina in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dea ex machina (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “dea ex machina.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dea_ex_machina. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.