aperçu

Borrowed from French aperçu.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌa.pɛːˈsjuː/

  • Audio (UK)

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌæ.pɚˈsuː/

aperçu (plural aperçus)

1. A clever insight.
   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin, →OCLC, page 143:

     I insisted on how his opinion mattered, and developed and construed his platitudes into aperçus he was far from entertaining himself.

   • 2001 December, David Brooks, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible”, in The Atlantic‎:

     In this place you can go to a year's worth of dinner parties without hearing anyone quote an aperçu he first heard on Charlie Rose.

   • 2004 November 10, Manohla Dargis, “Do You Hear Sleigh Bells? Nah, Just Tom Hanks and Some Train”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     "Every so often a hobo (Mr. Hanks again) materializes to dispense a cryptic aperçu to the boy, maybe because the child is the father of the man or because the film's envelope-pushing gobbled up most of the budget and there was only enough money for one star."

   • 2009 February 22, Maureen Dowd, “Dark Dark Dark”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     President Obama disdains sound bites, and he does not have Bill Clinton’s talent for reducing the abstruse to aperçus.

   • 2014 October 31, Ben Brantley, “When the Head Leads the Heart”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     While we know – because the script tells us so – that the people we are watching are in love and in pain and in trouble, they never come across as more than dispensers of sparkling aperçus.

   • 2022, China Miéville, chapter 3, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC:

     These paragraphs contain many freighted aperçus, formulations over which debates continue to rage, such as that ‘[t]he executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (1.12); […]

2. A summary or outline; words that summarize.

• earcup

• IPA^(key): /a.pɛʁ.sy/

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aperçu m (plural aperçus)

1. glance, glimpse
2. insight, hint

   L’avocat a donné au public un aperçu de la cause. ― The lawyer gave the public an insight into the case.

3. rough estimate

   Donnez-moi un aperçu des dépenses que j’aurai à faire. ― Give me an estimate of the expenses that I would have.

4. sketch, outline, summary
5. view
6. overview

   Ce que je vous dis là n’est qu’un aperçu de la question. ― What I say here is an overview of the issue.

7. preview

   Il y a dans cet ouvrage des aperçus très fins, mais rien n’est développé. ― There are fine previews in this book, but nothing developed.

aperçu (feminine aperçue, masculine plural aperçus, feminine plural aperçues)

1. past participle of apercevoir

aperçu

1. (nautical) aye, aye

• “aperçu”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.