cliffhanger
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Related to cliffhangers: Cliffhanger ending
cliffhanger
1. An ending of a piece of fiction (e.g., a television episode, chapter of a book, a film, etc.) characterized by a dramatically suspenseful and uncertain end. A good summer book always has a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter so that you never want to put it down! Judging by that movie's cliffhanger, I'd say we'll be seeing a sequel coming out fairly soon. The TV show kept audiences in suspense with a big cliffhanger at the end of the season finale.
2. A serial television or film production characterized by such endings. That show is a cliffhanger—the episodes never really have endings. That medical drama isn't particularly good, but it is a cliffhanger, so people just keep on watching it. If that show's a cliffhanger, then, nah, I'll pass—I like 30-minute episodes with neat resolutions.
3. Any contest, competition, or other such situation in which the outcome is suspenseful and uncertain until the very end. The two teams have been neck and neck for the entire second half, and with two minutes left this match has become a real cliffhanger. This election is looking like a cliffhanger, and we won't be able to truly say who's won until all the votes are counted. If all of the sport's best make it to the final heat, it will definitely be a cliffhanger.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
cliff-hanger
A situation whose outcome is in extremely suspenseful doubt until the last moment. The term comes from serialized adventure films popular in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, in which, at the end of each installment, the hero or heroine is left in a very dangerous situation, sometimes literally dangling from a cliff. The rationale, of course, was to entice the audience to return for the next installment in order to see what happened. By the 1940s the term was being transferred to other suspenseful states of affairs—for example, “the election was a cliff-hanger.”
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer