Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Deus Ex Machina |
Deus Ex MachinaNoun1. Any active agent who appears unexpectedly to solve and insoluble difficulty. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Aid | Relief, rescue; help at a dead lift; supernatural aid; deus ex machina. |
Auxiliary | Friend in need, Jack at a pinch, deus ex machina, guardian angel, tutelary genius. |
Deity | Eon, aeon, special providence, deus ex machina; avatar. |
Sorcerer | Warlock, charmer, exorcist, mage; cunning man, medicine man; Shaman, figure flinger, ecstatica; medium, clairvoyant, fortune teller; mesmerist; deus ex machina; soothsayer. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Greek tragedian Euripides was notorious for using this plot device. A few more recent examples, where it isn't literally a god-like being, but is a similar sudden resolution of plot, are in the films The Joyless Street and Pandora's Box by G.W. Pabst. In Pandora's Box, the movie is ended when for no apparent reason the main character is murdered by Jack the Ripper. Stephen King's novel The Stand would arguably be another example: a minor character who has gone insane returns with a nuclear bomb, which is set off by an electric charge taking the shape of a hand, annihilating Las Vegas; characters in a distant town believe the charge to have been the "Hand of God." Monty Python and the Holy Grail is another example; however, the ending — in which the movie comes to a sudden halt when the entire cast is arrested — is intentionally preposterous in this case.
The pronunciation is a problem in English. Traditional ways of saying Latin would have it something like DEE-us ex MAK-in-a, more modern ways of saying Latin would give perhaps DAY-oos ex MAH-kin-ah, but many people naturally bring in the modern English m'SHEEN, resulting in a mixed pronunciation.
See also: plot
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Deus ex machina."
Crosswords: Deus Ex Machina |
| Non-English Usage: "Deus Ex Machina" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. German (deus ex machina). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Deus ex machina (1971) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
deus ex machina | 96 |
definition deus ex machina | 5 |
deus ex machina west | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "deus ex machina"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||
German | deus ex machina. (various references) | ||||||||||
Pig Latin | eusday exay achinamay hızır gibi yetişen yardım, beklenmedik biçimde yetişen yardımcı güç. (various references) | ||||||||||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-c-d-e-e-h-i-m-n-s-u-x" | |
-3 letters: naumachies. | |
-4 letters: academies, audiences, damascene, deaminase, exciseman, haciendas, hexamines, humanised, muscadine, unashamed. | |
-5 letters: academes, amnesiac, audience, camisade, caudexes, chamades, echidnae, echidnas, encashed, enchased, endemics, eucaines, examined, examines, hacienda, headsman, headsmen, hexamine, humanise, inmeshed, machined, machines, maenades, maenadic, maundies, munchies, scandium, seminude, shamanic, uncashed, unmeshed, unseamed, unshamed. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Expressions: Internet 6. Translations: Modern 7. Anagrams 8. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.