"fourth wall" meaning in English

See fourth wall in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-fourth wall.ogg Forms: fourth walls [plural]
Etymology: A reference to the three walls of a box set, with the fourth wall being the imaginary wall separating the performers from the audience. Coined by philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot in 1758 and thus a calque of French quatrième mur. Etymology templates: {{coinage|en|Denis Diderot|in=1758|occupation=philosopher and art critic}} Coined by philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot in 1758, {{cal|en|fr|quatrième mur|nocap=1}} calque of French quatrième mur Head templates: {{en-noun}} fourth wall (plural fourth walls)
  1. (performing arts, idiomatic) The imaginary invisible wall at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: fourth-wall, 4th wall Derived forms: fourth wall joke, break the fourth wall Translations (imaginary invisible wall in theatre): vierde wand [masculine] (Dutch), neljäs seinä (Finnish), მეოთხე კედელი (meotxe ḳedeli) (Georgian), vierte Wand [feminine] (German), dördüncü duvar (Turkish)
    Sense id: en-fourth_wall-en-noun-G-JqJbO8 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Dutch translations, Terms with Finnish translations, Terms with French translations, Terms with Georgian translations, Terms with German translations, Terms with Japanese translations, Terms with Polish translations, Terms with Portuguese translations, Terms with Turkish translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 72 28 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 87 13 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 82 18 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 90 10 Disambiguation of Terms with Dutch translations: 80 20 Disambiguation of Terms with Finnish translations: 74 26 Disambiguation of Terms with French translations: 80 20 Disambiguation of Terms with Georgian translations: 76 24 Disambiguation of Terms with German translations: 80 20 Disambiguation of Terms with Japanese translations: 80 20 Disambiguation of Terms with Polish translations: 77 23 Disambiguation of Terms with Portuguese translations: 65 35 Disambiguation of Terms with Turkish translations: 75 25 Disambiguation of 'imaginary invisible wall in theatre': 95 5
  2. (by extension) The boundary between the fiction and the audience. Tags: broadly Translations (boundary between fiction and audience): vierde wand [masculine] (Dutch), neljäs seinä (Finnish), quatrième mur [masculine] (French), მეოთხე კედელი (meotxe ḳedeli) (Georgian), vierte Wand [feminine] (German), 第四の壁 (daishi no kabe, daiyon no kabe) (Japanese), czwarta ściana [feminine] (Polish), quarta dimensão [feminine] (Portuguese), dördüncü duvar (Turkish)
    Sense id: en-fourth_wall-en-noun-aCSasN68 Disambiguation of 'boundary between fiction and audience': 17 83

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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Download raw JSONL data for fourth wall meaning in English (6.8kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (bb46d54 and 0c3c9f6). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.