Meaning:
a witty response which, frustratingly, comes to one's mind just after the
opportunity to utter it is passed.
Background:
'The spirit of the staircase' or, as it is often written, 'the spirit of the
stairway', is one of those obliging phrases that has a definitive origin, in
that it is a quotation from Denis Diderot's Paradoxe sur le Com ien, written
1773-78.
In the text Diderot retells a situation in which Jacques Necker makes a
remark that perplexes him:
This confounds me and reduces me to silence, because the sensitive man,
like me, overwhelmed, loses his head and finds himself at the foot of the
stairs.
It is one of the few phrases that has come into English as a translation from
the French. The original, which even my schoolboy French is up to
translating, is 'L'esprit de l'escalier'. Most of the French phrases that
have been adopted into English are used in their original French form, even
the similar 'Esprit de corps'.
- www.phrases.org.uk
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Acutely aware of Esprit de L'escalier, I feel the pain all the time. I am
delighted to learn that its English translation means the same thing, both
literally and figuratively!
At the end of a bjj class, Fransisco was chatting with Sunny as I was pushing my
Lectric bike toward the door. Pointing to me, he said: "Look at that triathlete.
He runs, bikes, and swims."
It sounded so funny. "Yeah! E-bikes for triathlon!" would've been a nice comeback.
