cliffhanger.
An ending or stopping point calculated to leave a story unresolved, in order to create suspense.
Meaning & usage
An ending or stopping point calculated to leave a story unresolved, in order to create suspense.
An outcome which is awaited with keen anticipation, especially one which is delayed for a period of time or which is not known until the last minute.
Where this word comes from
From cliff + hanger, evoking the image of someone left hanging from a cliff, thereby having an uncertain fate. The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with the serialized version of Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes, published in Tinsley's Magazine in the 1870s, in which the character Henry Knight is left hanging off of a cliff. It was inspired by a real life story from his wife Emma's childhood, when she had to rescue one of her school friends from a similar position.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.