The distance from petting to peripeteia is extremely short ... "
Monika Lewinsky
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petting
definition
petting sex
Phrase used in old-fashioned teen sex manuals for foreplay without intercourse.
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peripeteia noun
a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation especially in a literary work
Did You Know?
Peripeteia comes from Greek, in which the verb peripiptein means "to fall around or "to change suddenly." It usually indicates a turning point in a drama after which the plot moves steadily to its denouement. In his Poetics, Aristotle describes peripeteia as the shift of the tragic protagonist's fortune from good to bad-a shift that is essential to the plot of a tragedy. The term is also occasionally used of a similar change in actual affairs. For example, in a June 7, 2006 article in The New York Times, Michael Cooper described William Weld's second term as Massachusetts' governor as "political peripeteia": it "began with a landslide victory and ended with frustrated hopes and his resignation."
First Known Use of peripeteia
1591, in the meaning defined above