Meaning
A story, episode or contest whose outcome is left suspended at a moment of crisis, so that the audience must return for the resolution; by extension any event whose result remains in doubt to the very end - an election, a title race, a budget negotiation. The OED's own definition, quoted in Wikipedia, runs: 'a serial film in which each episode ends in a desperate situation; hence, any story, play, etc., in which suspense is a main concern.' Spelling varies: cliffhanger, cliff-hanger and cliff hanger all occur. The Hardy scene is the famous prototype of the device, but calling it the term's origin goes beyond the record. Compare left hanging, and note that this site's exit stage left covers a different corner of the serial tradition. Regional use: American English origin (Variety, 1931); the device British Victorian; now general English.
Origin
The word is younger than the device. The OED's earliest evidence for cliffhanger is from 1931, in Variety, the showbusiness paper, and Merriam-Webster independently gives circa 1931 - another clean agreement. The device itself is Victorian: serial fiction left its heroes in peril at every instalment's end, and the famous prototype is Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes, serialized in Tinsley's Magazine from September 1872 to July 1873, in which Henry Knight is left hanging from a cliff face. But Wikipedia is careful: the Hardy origin of the term is what 'some have mistakenly considered', and David Lodge, who discusses the scene, 'does not claim this is the origin of the term; just that Hardy presents a literal rendering of it in prose' - Wiktionary's etymology still credits Hardy, a disagreement honestly reported. The silent film serials made the cliffhanger a weekly ritual from the 1910s onward. Farlex's modern examples show the extension: an election and a cup final can both be cliffhangers.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- cliffhanger ending
- cliffhangers
Usage Examples
- The season ended on a cliffhanger, the ambulance still racing, and the fans had to wait a year.
- With two minutes left and the scores level, the match had become a genuine cliffhanger.
- The recount turned the election into a week-long cliffhanger.