volte-face

1. 1.

   a major change in attitude or principle or point of view

   “an about-face on foreign policy”

   Synonymsabout-facereversalpolicy change

   Broaderchange

   Narrowerundoing

Questions about volte-face

What does volte-face mean?

volte-face means "a major change in attitude or principle or point of view".

How many syllables are in volte-face?

volte-face has 3 syllables: vol-te--face. The stress falls on "vol".

What is another word for volte-face?

Close synonyms include about-face, reversal, policy change. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is volte-face a common word?

volte-face is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.