Dictionary

lapalissade en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ləˌpælɪˈsɑːd/
• lə-păl'ĭ-sädʹ

Etymology

From French lapalissade, equivalent to Jacques de la Palice (a French nobleman and military officer) + -ade; see Lapalissian for more.

Meanings

1. An obvious, self-evident truth, especially humorously so; a tautology or truism.
   • His display of the virtues Dickens has popularized is a real fraud. Nothing can show that he wants to abide by them. That he only loves himself is a lapalissade. 1996, Bridges: A Senegalese Journal of English Studies:
   • In a certain way our theory is so obvious that it appears to us as a “lapalissade”. The cell is a network of phospholipid membranes and one of their chief functions is to keep certain substrates and enzymes apart. 1961, Robert John Cecil Harris, The Initial Effects of Ionizing Radiations on Cells: A Symposium Held in Moscow, October, 1960, Supported by UNESCO and the IAEA and Sponsored by the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.:
   • Despite their affection for Gavarni, they dismissed as a lapalissade his oft-repeated statement that science had killed the notion of God 1990, Malcolm Scott, The Struggle for the Soul of the French Novel: French Catholic and Realist Novelists, 1850–1970, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press:

Forms

Relateds

Lapalissian · Lapalissianly