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fourth wall
[ fawrth wawl ]
noun
- the imaginary, invisible wall, as across the front of a stage, that separates the world constructed by a play, movie, television show, video game, or literary work from the actual world inhabited by the audience.
51Թ History and Origins
Origin of fourth wall1
Idioms and Phrases
- break the fourth wall, to violate the conventional separation between the world of a play, movie, television show, video game, or literary work and the world inhabited by the viewer:
The actor’s periodic asides to the audience break the fourth wall and elicit much-needed laughs.
Example Sentences
For a brief second, the fourth wall of Godwin’s production is breached.
In the middle of Episode 3’s opening recitation of “This is a true-ish story based on a lie,” Phoenix Raei, the actor playing Hek, a PR crisis manager, starts to rattle off, “Some names have been changed and characters invented which is…” before halting to stare through the fourth wall instead of just talking to it.
Breaking the fourth wall is an ancient thing, especially in European theater.
Fans of the show had plenty of notice, though, even if in the middle of “The Finale” Demetriou's Nadja breaks the fourth wall to seemingly address everyone watching at home.
We’ve seen the characters occasionally break the fourth wall by addressing the camera directly or acknowledging the documentary crew, but this was a wrecking ball.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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