Word.ws English Dictionary

volte-faces

volte-faces is the plural of volte-face.

Meaning of volte-face

Noun

volte-face (plural volte-faces)

  1. A reversal of attitude, policy, or principle.
    • Psychoanalysis has sprung many surprises on us, performed more than one volte face before our indignant eyes.1921, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “Psychoanalysis vs. Morality”, in Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Seltzer, →OCLC, page 9
    Synonyms:
    about-face, U-turn
  2. A dramatic change in mood or tone.
    • Shakespeare often used volte-faces in the rhyming couplets at the end of his sonnets.

Questions about volte-faces

What is volte-faces the plural of?
Volte-faces is the plural of volte-face.

Words near volte-faces in the dictionary

  1. voltatypes
  2. volte
  3. volte face
  4. volte faces
  5. volte-face
  6. volte-faces
  7. volted
  8. volter
  9. Volterra
  10. Volterra integral equation
  11. Volterra integral equations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: volte-faces (page history and authors); volte-face (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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