"the reveal"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> On Feb 15, 2009, at 7:36 AM, i cited:
> >
> >   There was insufficient lead-up to the reveal at the end and the
> > perpetual name-droppingness of all the references was supremely
> > annoying.
> > apps.facebook.com/facebookshelf/people/1049054081?reviews_page=4
>
> note the nouning of "reveal" here.  fair number of relevant hits,
> including this one from a site of tv tropes:
>
>   The pivot in any plotline is often The Reveal. A character is
> revealed as another character's mother, a god, or secret suitor or
> arch nemesis in disguise. More broadly, the audience is given new
> information which had been withheld to create suspense. The Reveal
> changes the nature of the plot, often pushing it from suspense towards
> action. A good reveal will also create a new set of questions and
> further suspense.
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheReveal

This sense has been around for a while, and it will surely be included
in the soon-to-be-revised OED entry for "reveal". Earliest I'm finding
at the moment is this 1975 description of Allen Funt's "Candid Camera"
(snippet view on Google Book Search, but looks legit):

---
1975 _New Times_ 4 (Jan-Jun) 52 But now the final coup, Allen's
trademark-- the "reveal. "Madame, did you know that at this moment you
are on nationwide TV?"
http://books.google.com/books?id=GyRXAAAAMAAJ
---

--Ben Zimmer

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