tout ensemble

tout ensemble noun: the overall appearance or impression, especially of a work of art.

Noun

tout ensemble

The overall appearance or impression, especially of a work of art.
- The singularity of his appearance, the beams which darted from his eyes, the brightness of his Wit, and the whole tout ensemble of his person had subdued the hearts of so many of the young Ladies […].1790, Jane Austen, “Jack and Alice”, in Juvenilia
- On this peninsula stood a dwelling-house. […] [I]ts tout ensemble struck me with the keenest sense of combined novelty and propriety—in a word, of poetry.1849, Edgar Allan Poe, Landor's Cottage

'Tis the tout ensemble I must see: the whole as opposed to the details.1897, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 20, in St. Ives:
A variety of uniforms, worn by the officers at different tables, gave colour and distinction to a tout ensemble with which even Norgate could find no fault.1915, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 1, in The Double Traitor:

From French tout ensemble, literally "all together".

What does tout ensemble mean?: Tout ensemble means the overall appearance or impression, especially of a work of art.
How do you use tout ensemble in a sentence?: 'Tis the tout ensemble I must see: the whole as opposed to the details.
What part of speech is tout ensemble?: Tout ensemble is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: tout ensemble (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “tout ensemble.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tout_ensemble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.