Title
The phrase "beau geste" is from the French, meaning "a gracious (or fine) gesture".
In French, the phrase includes the suggestion of a fine gesture with unwelcome or futile consequences, and an allusion to the chanson de geste, a literary poem celebrating the legendary deeds of a hero.
In English, "geste" is a homophone with "jest," meaning "a joke" or "to joke." As a pun, a "beau geste" may therefore indicate a beautiful (or poignant) joke.
Read more about this topic: Beau Geste
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see
the people of the world
exactly at the moment when
they first attained the title of
‘suffering humanity’”
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)
“The End?”
—Theodore Simonson. Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.. End title card, The Blob, printed on screen at the end of the movie (1958)
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)