Word.ws English Dictionary

romans à clef

/rə(ʊ)ˌmɒ̃zaˈkleɪ/

romans à clef is the plural of roman à clef.

Meaning of roman à clef

Noun

roman à clef (plural romans à clef)

  1. A piece of fiction, especially a novel, describing real-life people or events.
    • I want to emphasize that in this respect my account of romance differs substantially from both Annabel Patterson's argument that the primary purpose of roman à clef in early modern England was to avoid censorship and Michael McKeon's […]2007, A. Zurcher, Seventeenth-Century English Romance: Allegory, Ethics, and Politics, Springer, →ISBN, page 9

Questions about romans à clef

What is romans à clef the plural of?
Romans à clef is the plural of roman à clef.
How do you pronounce romans à clef?
Romans à clef is pronounced /rə(ʊ)ˌmɒ̃zaˈkleɪ/.

Words near romans à clef in the dictionary

  1. Romanovas
  2. Romanovian
  3. Romanowski
  4. Romanowskis
  5. romans
  6. romans à clef
  7. romans à thèse
  8. Romansch
  9. Romansh
  10. Romanshorn
  11. Romanski

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: romans à clef (page history and authors); roman à clef (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “romans à clef.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/romans_%C3%A0_clef. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.