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tour de force

Definition of tour de force

Examples of tour de force in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tour de force.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1802, in the meaning defined above

Dictionary Entries Near tour de force

tour d'horizon

Cite this Entry

“Tour de force.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tour%20de%20force. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.

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Definition of tour de force noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

tour de force

• a cinematic tour de force
• It was described as a ‘literary tour de force’.

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• tour de force
• 1.1 Etymology
• 1.2 Pronunciation
• 1.3.1 Related terms
• 1.3.2 Translations
• 1.3.3 See also
• 2.1.1 Synonyms
• 3.1 Etymology
• 3.2 Pronunciation
• 3.3.1 Descendants
• 4.1.1 Declension

English [ edit ]

Etymology [ edit ].

Borrowed from French tour de force ( “ feat of strength ” ) , circa 19th century.

Pronunciation [ edit ]

• ( US ) IPA ( key ) : /ˌtuɹ.dəˈfoɹs/ , /ˌtuɹ.dəˈfɔɹs/

Noun [ edit ]

tour de force ( plural tours de force )

• 1976 , Richard Dawkins , The Selfish Gene , Kindle edition, OUP Oxford, published 2016 , page 429 : Much as I admire Wilson’s tour de force —I wish people would read it more and read about it less—my hackles have always risen at the entirely false suggestion that his book influenced mine.

Related terms [ edit ]

• tour d'horizon

Translations [ edit ]

See also [ edit ].

• coup de force

Dutch [ edit ]

tour de force   m ( plural tours de force )

• exploit , tour de force

Synonyms [ edit ]

• huzarenstuk

French [ edit ]

Literally, “ turn of strength ” , or more loosely translated as “ turn of force ” .

• IPA ( key ) : /tuʁ də fɔʁs/

Descendants [ edit ]

German [ edit ].

tour de force   f ( genitive tour de force , plural tours de force )

• Alternative spelling of Tour de Force

Declension [ edit ]

• English terms borrowed from French
• English terms derived from French
• English terms with IPA pronunciation
• English terms with audio links
• English lemmas
• English nouns
• English countable nouns
• English multiword terms
• English terms with usage examples
• English terms with quotations
• Dutch lemmas
• Dutch nouns
• Dutch multiword terms
• Dutch masculine nouns
• French terms with IPA pronunciation
• French terms with audio links
• French lemmas
• French nouns
• French countable nouns
• French multiword terms
• French masculine nouns
• German lemmas
• German nouns
• German multiword terms
• German feminine nouns

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• tour de force

an exceptional achievement by an artist, author, or the like, that is unlikely to be equaled by that person or anyone else; stroke of genius: Herman Melville's Moby Dick was a tour de force.

a particularly adroit maneuver or technique in handling a difficult situation: The way the president got his bill through the Senate was a tour de force.

a feat requiring unusual strength, skill, or ingenuity.

Origin of tour de force

Words nearby tour de force.

• tourbillion
• Tour-de-France
• tour d'horizon
• tour en l'air

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use tour de force in a sentence

In her aching memoir, she embarks on a tour de force examination of her childhood, marked first by her mother’s abandoning her when she was a toddler and later by the death of her beloved father.

Through the late 1960s, Capote claimed to be writing his masterpiece, his tour de force based on his swans, but several deadlines passed for it.

At 35, Hawa Hassan is already a tour de force when it comes to Somali food in America.

Understated yet opulent, measured, and intensely creepy, it’s a tour de force in balancing uncomfortable levels of tension and suspense with deep pathos.

Page’s tour de force performance in Hard Candy led, two years later, to Juno, a low-budget indie film that brought Page Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations and sudden megafame.

His family memoir, Sweet and Low, is a tour de force of reporting and memory—tender, curious, and exceptionally funny.

It is a tour de force of reporting: 13,000 words on a two-week deadline.

It's also a masterpiece of choreographed c--tery—Joffrey's final tour de force .

And, of course, she's best known for her ball-busting tour de force as Ed Helms's wife in The Hangover.

As a result, his version is a technical tour de force but a movie that never gets under your skin.

As a tour de force in the gentle art of lying, the snake-story is justly esteemed.

As a tour de force of geometrical imagination it would be difficult to parallel this hypothesis.

The physical tour de force , was one of those feats of agility in which Neb had been my instructor, ten years before.

If the Mastersingers was a little less successful as a work of art we should still have to regard it as an amazing tour de force .

The music for such incidents cannot be of the highest beauty; here we have one of the cases of a tour de force .

British Dictionary definitions for tour de force

/ French ( tur də fɔrs , English ˈtʊə də ˈfɔːs ) /

a masterly or brilliant stroke, creation, effect, or accomplishment

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Cultural definitions for tour de force

[ (toor duh fawrs ) ]

A feat accomplished through great skill and ability: “The speech was a tour de force; it swept the audience off its feet.”

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Tours de force NYT Crossword Clue

Tours de force Crossword Clue Answers are listed below. Did you came up with a solution that did not solve the clue? No worries we keep a close eye on all the clues and update them regularly with the correct answers.

TOURS DE FORCE NYT

Definição de 'tour de force'

• tour de force

tour de force in British English

Tour de force in american english, exemplos de frases que incluem "tour de force" tour de force, consulta alfabética tour de force.

• tour a site
• tour company
• tour d'horizon
• tour destination
• tour director
• tour en l'air
• Todas as palavras de INGLÊS que começam com 'T'

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Pronúncia em inglês de tour de force

Tour de force.

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(Pronúncias em inglês de tour de force do Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus e Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary , both sources © Cambridge University Press)

Palavra do Dia

cloak-and-dagger

used to describe an exciting story involving secrets and mystery, often about spies, or something that makes you think of this

Shoots, blooms and blossom: talking about plants

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Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Is a Sprawling, Endlessly Entertaining Tour de Force: Album Review

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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It sounds pretty magnificent, if a short answer is required. But if it’s genre we all really want to get into, “Cowboy Carter” sounds kinda country, and kinda not — in a way that feels wholly country. Because what is modern country music if not a cornucopia that’s a long way past being defined by a single sound? “Act II” feels a lot like a 27-course meal, difficult to describe in whole, but endlessly easy to digest, serving by serving. There are moments throughout where she’s embracing the tropes and traditions of country as we’ve known it, and just as many where you’re thinking she decided to abandon the concept, until suddenly Willie Nelson or Dolly Parton pop up for one of their intermittent spoken cameos, or there’s a fleeting Patsy Cline interpolation, and suddenly she’s veered back into C&W mode again. No one will mistake this sprawling set for ever following a straight path, or having a remotely dull moment.

It’s almost as if Beyoncé was watching some of the evolutionary leaps and hiccups country has been experiencing as it redefines its boundaries — as the music always has — and said, “Hold my Armand de Brignac. I’ve got this.”  But it’s not just a matter of what Beyoncé can do for country music; it’s what her concept of country can do for her, in expanding her musical empire and even her already well-honed sense of self. It’s a lot.

As a whole, “Cowboy Carter” is a masterpiece of sophisticated vocal arranging, laid out on top of mostly fairly stark band tracks. It’s not as if she ever laid off that great trick of her trade, even in a dance-based album like “Renaissance.” But here her brilliance at rendering self-harmonies is pushed up to the forefront in a way that might not have been as easy to focus on for a listener since Destiny’s Child covered “Carol of the Bells” for a Christmas record. It’s bliss.

Apart from these mostly common elements, the tracks almost couldn’t be more different from one another. Who knew that her exploration of Black Country would seem so much like her White Album? Or like a countrified version of Side 2 of “Abbey Road,” once the second half of this album turns into a series of short, sometimes weirder songs that have more strength as part of a dizzying medley than they might as Spotify singles. In its own fashion, “Cowboy Carter” plays as well as a smartly sequenced album as “Renaissance” did, even though that felt like a DJ club set and the new one goes harder on eclectic songcraft.

Her decision to issue “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” as the two teaser tracks two months in advance of the album turns out to have been ideal for setting expectations for two very different sides of the record. “Texas” wasn’t shy about invoking country tropes, like line-dancing; it, along with some of the attendent pre-release imagery, made some suspicious souls wonder if this album would end up feeling like country cosplay. But then there was “Carriages,” a deeply personal ballad about her misspent youth as a budding starlet, sounding nothing like either old or new country, but married to the genre somehow just by the sound of its intricately plucked strings and storytelling.

There aren’t many moments that sell the lifestyle-branding side of country as hard as “Texas Hold ‘Em” does. (That song did its job; it’s still rising on the country airplay charts, upending some people’s initial expectations.) But of course she’s tying herself to mainstream country’s coolest elders, bringing in Willie Nelson, who does a couple of faux-DJ skits, and Dolly Parton, who brings a chuckle to a spoken introduction to Bey’s “Jolene” cover by pointing out the correlation between that classic’s auburn-haired temptress and the fabled Becky-with-the-good-hair. The Dolly homage is unquestionably the most pure country number on the album, but it’s not a completely straight take, as Beyoncé has rewritten almost all of the lyrics (and added a bridge) to make the song a fiercely protective warning instead of an endangered housewife’s plea. Taking out all the vulnerability lessens the tune a little, but it’s still a kick to hear “Jolene” with a serious infusion of “Lemonade.”

Did we mention that this murder fantasy — which starts off with a classical-sounding guitar that sounds almost fit for a Marty Robbins song — eventually winds up with Beyoncé flawlessly singing an aria from the 1700s, “Caro Mio Ben,” in Italian? It’s that kind of unpredictable album, although this at least counts as probably the strangest turn on it. Unless you count “Oh Louisiana,” a much goofier number that has Beyoncé covering a Chuck Berry oldie in a sped-up voice for a mere 52 seconds.

In evangelizing for this album, it’s hard to know whether to emphasize its weirder choices or its more conventional pleasures. There are more than enough of both of them to give “Cowboy Carter” a real sense of dynamics. But when it comes to the most straightforward material, the average listener may gravitate immediately to Beyoncé’s crowd-pleasing duet with Miley Cyrus , “II Most Wanted,” which has producer Ryan Tedder building a breezy buddyship anthem over an interpolation of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” “I’ll be your shotgun rider ’til the day I die / Smoke out the window flyin’ down the 405,” they sing, putting the western back in country & Western. “II Most Wanted” is not the most interesting song here, but Bey harmonizes with Cyrus just as effectively as she does with herself. It’d be no surprise if their duet finds its way onto and sticks around the adult contemporary chart for about 18 months.

Sexy-time is a big thing on this album, too. Another superstar duet, “Levii’s Jeans,” has Post Malone in the role of Jay-Z. (Or at least we can surmise from other lyrics on the album that Beyoncé considers herself to have a very healthy marital relationship, physically and otherwise.) “Baby, let me rattle that snake with my venom / Denim on denim on denim on denim,” she sings, although it’s actually more lilting and gentle in tone than any saucy lyric excerpt is going to make it sound.

There are theories that “Act III” in her promised musical triptych will be a rock ‘n’ roll album. It could be wishful thinking; maybe she is saving an all-arias album for last in the trilogy. But if she is planning to rock, she gets a slight head start on it here with a couple of numbers here. “Bodyguard” is a strummed soft-rock number with a straight-up backbeat, sounding almost like a demo, in its sweet minimalism.

Later, she seriously ramps up the energy with “Ya Ya,” which brings out her Tina Turner side, and/or sounds like a “TAMI Show” outtake. “Ya Ya” risks extending itself an interpolation too far, as some iconic bass riffing from “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” is succeeded by Bey twice throwing in the hook from that famous country classic, “Good Vibrations.” On paper, “Ya Ya” is overstuffed with references, but that doesn’t really matter when you can feel the wind coming off the fringe of her miniskirt.

It takes until the 12 th song on the album — at which point, remember, we’re not halfway through — till we get the first and only real hip-hop song on the album, “Spaghetti,” which has Beyoncé rapping, ever so briefly. But it does have, yes, the barest trace of a spaghetti Western feel, which is just enough to technically tie it back to the overriding concept. It also has an introducion from Linda Martell, the first Black female star in country music (circa 1970), who gives a short homily: “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? … In theory, they have a simple definition, but in practice, well, some may feel confined.”

And then, after a few more essentially acoustic-based songs that pick up the tempo, there’s the final stretch of the album, where things finally get a lot looser and loopier. It may be at this late point in the album when Beyoncé loses some people. After the bonkers “Oh Louisiana” and the 1:13 paean to oral sex that is “Desert Eagle,” a few listeners might be going: What the hell was that we just heard? Suddenly, after that, it begins turning into a club album, with “II Hands to Heaven,” which has an electronic pulse we haven’t heard much of, and “Tyrant,” which flirts with trap, even though Bey is keeping the rodeo underpinnings alive with a “Giddy-up, giddy-up.”

Hearing the album finally turn into something that feels a bit closer to 2022’s “Renaissance” toward the very end could be seen as a reward for some of her faithful fans who are more into dance music for sticking through the Texas two-stepping. But in country terms, it also feels a bit like going to California’s Stagecoach Festival, where the headliner is now always followed at the end of the final night by a late-night DJ set from Diplo, since the line between line-dancing and EDM culture is being further erased these days.

Who cares if any or all of it is country or not, you might ask? Well, lots of people do — especially fellow Black artists who have a stake in how this album is received and how it might affect their futures. Martell, 82, is on board for a couple of spoken-word interludes to serve as a reminder Black country’s largely swept-under-the-rug past. But Beyoncé has brought on board here several young singers who are part of the music’s past and future, including Willie Jones, on “Just for Fun,” and Shaboozey, on “Spaghetti” and again on “Sweet Honey Buckin’,” where their interplay is as randy as the title suggests.

“You were only waiting for this moment to arrive” — that’s a key line for an album that lives up to its event status as an inherent piece of agitprop and socially significant performance art, reflecting and affecting the history of Black music and country. It obviously has been compared to Ray Charles’ landmark 1962 “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” but this feels different than someone coming in and adopting the existing country songbook for their own purposes, vital as that was. Beyoncé expanding this historic catalog with her own crucial additions to it is a never-to-be-forgotten signpost, however much it does or doesn’t immediately affect the fortunes of those still trying to get a basic foothold in the genre.

And she’s not pulling this off either by unduly ingratiating herself into a scene with country customs or ignoring those hallmarks entirely. With this endlessly entertaining project, she gets to be a warrior of female and Black pride and a sweetheart of the radio. Because being Beyoncé means never having to pretend to be just one thing.

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