L'esprit de l'escalier

L'esprit de l'escalier or l'esprit d'escalier (literally, the spirit of the stairway, idiomatically staircase wit) is a French term used in English that describes the predicament of thinking of the perfect retort too late.

Origin

This name for the phenomenon comes from French encyclopedist and philosopher Denis Diderot's description of such a situation in his Paradoxe sur le comédien. During a dinner at the home of statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, "l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier" ("a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again [when he reaches] the bottom of the stairs"). In this case, “the bottom of the stairs” refers to the architecture of the kind of hôtel particulier or mansion to which Diderot had been invited. In such houses, the reception rooms were located on the étage noble, one floor above the ground floor, so that to have reached the bottom of the stairs means to have definitively left the gathering in question.

Similar English terms

English speakers sometimes call this "escalator wit". Afterwit can also be a synonym for this concept, with forewit as its antonym.

In other languages

The Yiddish trepverter ("staircase words") and the German loan translation Treppenwitz (when used in an English language context) express the same idea as l'esprit de l'escalier. However, Treppenwitz in contemporary German has an additional meaning: It also refers to events or facts that seem to contradict their own background or context. The frequently used phrase "Treppenwitz der Weltgeschichte" ("staircase joke of world history") derives from the title of a book by that name by W. Lewis Hertslet and means "a paradox of history".

See also

• Epimetheus (mythology)