Meaning
To behave loudly and emotionally in public, drawing attention through an outburst of anger, grief or drama, and usually embarrassing whoever is nearby. Slightly disapproving: it suggests the display is excessive, unnecessary or put on for effect, so people are forever being urged not to do it in restaurants, airports or at family weddings. Slightly disapproving and conversational; it implies the outburst was excessive or performative. Regional use: General English (theatrical origin).
Origin
The noun 'scene' entered English in the late Middle Ages through French from Latin scena, ultimately from the Greek skene, the stage building; the OED's earliest evidence for the English noun is from 1481. From the theatrical unit of action the word broadened to any striking view or incident, and by the early nineteenth century it also meant an exhibition of passionate feeling that embarrasses onlookers, with an 1832 quotation already speaking of a 'lover of scenes'. The collocation itself is first cited in 1814, in Elizabeth Hervey's novel Amabel, in which the narrator is persuaded not to arrive at midnight and risk one, and it was routine in fiction by the age of Henry James and Isherwood. The underlying image plainly treats a public outburst as a piece of theatre staged for spectators, though no source pins down the exact step from stage to street.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- cause a scene
- create a scene
- make an awful scene
Usage Examples
- Determined not to make a scene at the restaurant, she paid for the wrong order and left.
- When the flight was cancelled a third time, he made such a scene that staff offered him a hotel room.
- Her grandmother made a scene at the christening, but everyone had expected it.