L'esprit de l'escalier orl'esprit d'escalier (UK:/lɛˌspriːd(əl)ɛˈskæljeɪ/,US:/lɛˌspriːd(əˌl)ɛskəˈljeɪ/,[1]French:[lɛspʁid(əl)ɛskalje];lit. 'staircase wit') is aFrench term used inEnglish for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late.
This name for the phenomenon comes from French encyclopedist and philosopherDenis Diderot's description of such a situation in his "Paradoxe sur le comédien" ("Paradox of the Actor").[2] During a dinner at the home of statesmanJacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, "a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and doesn't come to himself again until at the bottom of the stairs" ("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").
In this case, "the bottom of the stairs" refers to the architecture of the kind ofhôtel particulier or mansion to which Diderot had been invited. In such houses, thereception rooms were on theétage noble, one floor above the ground floor.[3] To have reached the bottom of the stairs means to have definitively left the gathering.
An older English term that was sometimes used for this meaning isafterwit; it is used, for example, inJames Joyce'sUlysses (Chapter 9).
TheYiddishtrepverter ("staircase words")[4] and theGermanloan translationTreppenwitz express the same idea asl'esprit de l'escalier. However, in contemporary GermanTreppenwitz has an additional meaning: it refers to events or facts that seem to contradict their own background or context.[5] The frequently used phraseTreppenwitz der Weltgeschichte ("staircase joke of world history") derives from the title of a book by that name byWilliam Lewis Hertslet [de][6] (1882; much expanded 1895) and means "irony of history" or "paradox of history".[7][8]
InRussian, the notion is close to the native Russian saying "задним умом крепки" (zadnim umom krepki, "Ourhindsight is strong").
The French expression is also used in French. English speakers sometimes call this "escalator wit" or "staircase wit".[9]
The dictionary definition ofl'esprit de l'escalier at Wiktionary The dictionary definition ofafterthought at Wiktionary