fourth wall | Idiomator

Meaning: (performing arts,idiomatic)Theimaginaryinvisiblewall at the front of thestagein aprosceniumtheatre, through which theaudiencesees the action in the world of the play.1916February 20, “Second Thoughts on First Nights”, inNew York Times, page X7:This is a flat, unnecessary, and strangely disturbing denial of thefourth-wallconvention, that unwritten agreement between playwright and playgoer whereby you think of yourself at the theatre as a privileged, exonerated, comfortably seated eavesdropper.2005August 31, Philip Kennicott, “Our Aura of Security, Shattered Like Glass”, inWashington Post, pageC01:There's been a convention in the theater world to think of the division between audience and spectacle as afourth wall, a wall that the playwright tries to eliminate through the force of his drama.; (by extension)Theboundarybetween thefictionand the audience.1999, Orson Scott Card,(Please provide the book title or journal name):Even though you, the author, may be maintaining afourth wallbetween your characters and your readers, he, the narrator, is not keeping thatfourth wallbetween himself and the audiencehethinks he's telling the story to.2003, Robert Keith Sawyer,Improvised Dialogues: Emergence and Creativity in Conversation, page107:Thefourth wallis the imaginary barrier between the stage and the audience, and the phrase is a metaphor for the dramatic frame.2003, Cathy Haase,Acting for Film, page92:As actors, we are still looking out into the imaginaryfourth wall. The difference is that in film, thefourth wallis no longer fixed;2004, Diana Fuss,The Sense of an Interior: Four Writers and the Rooms that Shaped Them, page207:... removes thefourth wallof the nineteenth-century novel and, in doing so, eliminates the border between a fictional inside and a nonfictional outside.2005, Chris Crawford,Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling, page208:I've saved the worst for last. The crudest scheme is to drop thefourth walland advise players as to actions that are inhibiting

Examples:

EN: I am besieged by crimes I have not committed and have often been tempted to scale that mysterious fourth wall on which men inscribe their loves and their dreams.
ES: Confieso estar amenazado por faltas que no he cometido, y haber querido franquear muchas veces el cuarto muro misterioso, sobre el cual los hombres escriben sus amores y sus sueños.
EN: The false Yetaxa shall be placed in that room and the fourth wall added.
ES: Allí colocaremos a la falsa Yetaxa... añadiendo un cuarto muro.
EN: was that we put a fourth wall in, with a window.
ES: Dímelo. - ¿Recuerda aquella guerra medieval, Señor?
EN: You're breaking the fourth wall!
ES: ¡El espectáculo debe continuar!
EN: You don't see me breaking the fourth wall.
ES: Tu no me ves tirando la cuarta pared.
EN: Breaking the fourth wall, and the fifth.
ES: Romper la cuarta pared y la quinta pared.
EN: -in our apartment. And they rhymed and they were mean and Like there were only three walls and not a fourth wall and
ES: - ¿Lo dices en serio?
EN: I've just crossed the fourth wall.
ES: Sí que lo estoy
EN: You lived in tunnel vision. The inmates were locked in a cell with three walls and the fourth wall was made of metal bars.
ES: Fue una especie de panóptico perfecto en donde el preso está encerrado en una celda que tiene tres paredes y la cuarta pared es todo reja.
EN: Stay in character. Don't break the fourth wall.
ES: No rompas la cuarta pared.
EN: And it was like breaking the fourth wall.
ES: Y era como romper la cuarta pared. Lo sabemos.
EN: Uh, Caden, you're breaking the fourth wall.
ES: Caden, estás rompiendo la cuarta pared...
EN: - You ever hear of the fourth wall?
ES: - ¿Has oído de la cuarta pared?
EN: With this seemingly harmless breaking of the proverbial fourth wall, Miss Luxx pretty much started a revolution.
ES: Con esta aparentemente inofensiva ruptura de la proverbial cuarta pared la señorita Luxx básicamente inició una revolución.
EN: You're breaking the fourth wall here.
ES: Estás rompiendo la cuarta pared aquí.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).