Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
tête-bêche en · ADJ
Pronunciation
Etymology
From French tête-bêche (literally “head-to-foot”).
Meanings
-
(not-comparable) Of a postage stamp, printed upside down relative to the following stamp of the same row or column.
Liu himself is a professional stamp collector, and in 1972 he bought a tête-bêche pair of Qing dynasty stamps from an auction in London.
2017, David Der-wei Wang, A New Literary History of Modern China, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 704:
tête-bêche en · NOUN
Pronunciation
Etymology
From French tête-bêche (literally “head-to-foot”).
Meanings
-
A book where two texts are bound together, with one text rotated 180° relative to the other, such that when one text runs head-to-tail, the other runs tail-to-head.
It's an odd little confection, the tête-bêche, but it's oddly pleasing. Each author gets a fair crack of the whip, with their own cover and top-billing, and the illusion of two separate books makes a head-to-tail volume seem somehow to be good value.
2011 July 28, David Barnett, “Tête-bêche books make a speculative return”, in The Guardian:
Forms
Relateds
dos a dos