Meaning
A sudden, unexpected turn in a story's direction - a revelation that reverses what the audience believed, re-routing the plot at a stroke; Wiktionary defines it as a change in the direction or expected outcome of the plot of a film, novel or other narrative work. Beyond fiction, a twist in the tale awaits any real sequence of events that suddenly rewrites itself. The exclamatory use ('plot twist!') marks life's unexpected turns. Spoiler etiquette now governs how plot twists may be discussed; compare the older twist in the tale, the British form. Regional use: General English; the phrase's modern record is American.
Origin
The narrative device is as old as storytelling, but the label has a datable modern record: the OED's earliest evidence for plot twist is from 1920, in the Los Angeles Times - the movie town's paper adopting the movie trade's word for the surprise that sold a picture. Wiktionary's entry carries the definition with citations into the 2010s, and the phrase's currency has only grown in the age of the spoiler-averse audience: the twist ending, the big reveal and the exclamatory social-media 'plot twist' for life's surprises all descend from it. The sister phrase a twist in the tale is the common British form.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- plot twists
- twist in the tale
Usage Examples
- The plot twist in the final reel reclassified every earlier scene.
- Just when the deal looked dead, the twist: the rival bidder had been the seller all along.
- Her memoir saves its plot twist for the last chapter, and it lands.