revelation
/rɛvəˈleɪʃ(ə)n
/noun
1A surprising and previously unknown fact that has been disclosed to others: revelations about his personal life...
- Surprised by the revelation, Shanza slipped in the sand again.
- In fact, the American landscape occasionally yields surprising revelations of continuity.
- A Pisces person can shock or surprise you with a revelation; it's best not to react but to give yourself time to understand and respond.
Synonyms
disclosure, surprising fact, divulgence, declaration, utterance, announcement, report, news, leak, avowal;
acknowledgement, admission, confession
1.1 [mass noun] The making known of something that was previously secret or unknown: the revelation of a plot to assassinate the king...
- Those in charge obviously feel that the greater risk is the unlawful revelation of trade secrets.
- She incapacitates him through her revelation of the secret of his birth at a moment when he should have been at his strongest.
- Yet the structure of the novel, the elements of revelation of character and plot, have been rearranged in quite a strange way.
Synonyms
divulging, divulgence, telling, disclosure, disclosing, letting slip, letting out, letting drop, giving away, giving out, leaking, leak, betrayal, unveiling, making known, making public, bringing to public notice/attention, broadcasting, airing, publicizing, publication, publishing, circulation, dissemination, passing on, proclamation, announcing, announcement, reporting, report, declaring, declaration, posting, communication, imparting, unfolding, vouchsafing;
admission, confession
rare divulgation
uncovering, turning up, exposure, exposing, bringing to light, unearthing, digging up, unveiling, unmasking, smoking out, detecting, detection
1.2Used to emphasize the remarkable quality of someone or something: seeing them play at international level was a revelation...
- Barcelona footballer Ronaldinho is an absolute revelation for taking the game to a different level.
- ‘The singing skills of some our guests were an absolute revelation,’ says Asokan.
- For those lucky enough to have caught onto his comedy before his untimely death, Hicks was an absolute revelation.
2 [mass noun] The divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence: an attempt to reconcile Darwinian theories with biblical revelation [count noun]: a divine revelation...
- We simply must rely on God to give us divine revelation by his Holy Spirit.
- Also included under this heading are all false religions or cults which claim supernatural revelation but contradict the Bible.
- Pope John Paul II has said that divine revelation reveals not only God to man but man to himself.
2.1 (Revelation or Revelations; in full the Revelation of St John the Divine) The last book of the New Testament, recounting a divine revelation of the future to St John.
Derivatives
revelational
- History becomes revelational not in itself, or as such, but through the illuminating work of God, who uses history both to verify and to challenge human understandings of scriptural truth-claims.
- The immediate problem with these reformulations of doctrine, of course, is the extent to which they fulfill Ritschl's notion of a revelational rediscovery.
- This revelational aspect of Page's poetry - which I am going to suggest is much less integral to her more recent work - is inseparable from her vision of vision.
Origin
Middle English (in the theological sense): from Old French, or from late Latin revelatio(n-), from revelare 'lay bare' (see reveal1). Sense 1 dates from the mid 19th century.