Word.ws English Dictionary

volte face

volte face is the alternative form 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.

Forms of volte face

pluralvolte faces

Questions about volte face

What is volte face the alternative form of?
Volte face is the alternative form of volte-face.

Words near volte face in the dictionary

  1. voltaplasts
  2. voltas
  3. voltatype
  4. voltatypes
  5. volte
  6. volte face
  7. volte faces
  8. volte-face
  9. volte-faces
  10. volted
  11. volter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: volte face (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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