deus ex machina (DAY-uhs eks ma-kuh-nuh, -nah, MAK-uh-nuh) noun

   1. In Greek and Roman drama, a god lowered by stage machinery to resolve
      a plot or extricate the protagonist from a difficult situation.

   2. An unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event
      introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a
      situation or untangle a plot.

   3. A person or event that provides a sudden and unexpected solution to
      a difficulty.

[New Latin deus ex machina : deus, god + ex, from + machina, machine
(translation of Greek theos apo mekhanes).]

   "In fact the duke acts as the deus ex machina of the piece, working in
   the background to ensure that everything turns out right and manipulating
   the characters' actions along the way."
   Robert Nott, Lust, justice and faith, The Santa Fe New Mexican, Jun 23,
   2000.

When we face a serious crisis we often look upwards for divine intervention.
In such hopeless times we pray to the gods to descend from heaven and
deliver us from whatever travail prevails. In ancient Greek and Roman drama,
the gods literally came down from above, though not from heaven, to help the
heros of the drama and save the plot.

As it turns out, the gods themselves needed a little bit of help coming
down. A crane was used to lower a god onto the stage and untangle the plot.
Thus he was known as deus ex machina, literally, a god from a machine. Soon
the figurative use of this device in a drama began to be described by the
same name. Greek dramatist Euripides (480-406 BC) was particularly fond
of it. We are all intimately familiar with this device thanks to popular
cinema. The hero who had supposedly drowned half-way through the story is
miraculously revived to accompany the heroine into the sunset.

This week we look at more words from the world of literature.       -Anu

P.S. I'll be in Oahu, Maui & Hawaii Islands and away from my email during
Nov 23 - Dec 2. AWAD will continue, however, there will be no AWADmail.

.............................................................................
I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether
I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. -Chuang Tzu, mystic and philosopher
(c. 4th century BC)

Q: Some time ago you featured a quote/word about x in AWAD. Could you resend 
it?
A: You may search the archives at http://wordsmith.org/awad/search.html
   or browse them at http://wordsmith.org/awad/archives.html All the
   words and quotes since the beginning of AWAD are available there.

Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/deus_ex_machina.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/deus_ex_machina.ram