suspension of disbelief
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Coined by English poet, literary critic and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817.
Noun
[edit]suspension of disbelief (usually uncountable, plural suspensions of disbelief)
- People's acceptance, for the sake of appreciation of art (including literature and the like), of what they know to be a nonfactual premise of the work of art.
- In science fiction films, suspension of disbelief is essential.
- 1955, Donald Keene, “The Japanese Theatre”, in Japanese Literature, page 63:
- On the other hand, Chikamatsu could induce a suspension of disbelief with the same means, thus producing an effect of reality within basic unreality. (The suspension of disbelief is, of course, nothing new to Western audiences.)
- 2010 June 17, John Landis, “John Landis on why Ray Harryhausen's effects are still so special”, in The Guardian[1], →ISSN:
- All films require "suspension of disbelief" to work effectively. And every film creates its own unspoken rules to accomplish this.
- 2022 January 7, Jordan Calhoun, “The One Thing TV Characters Don’t Talk About”, in Humans Being[2], The Atlantic:
- Characters are either rich, comfortable, or struggling, but we rarely know how rich, how comfortable, or how much they struggle in concrete-enough terms to relate to. Money is involved in every important decision in one’s life; TV characters simply frown at a bank statement or gasp at a hidden figure on a piece of paper. The topic of money requires the most awkward suspension of disbelief in fiction.
Synonyms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]people's acceptance of what they know to be a nonfactual premise
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Further reading
[edit]
suspension of disbelief on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
