Latin for "a god from a machine."
Describes the practice of some Greek playwrights (especially Euripides) to end a drama with a god, lowered to the stage by a mechanical apparatus, who by his judgment and commands resolved the dilemmas of the human characters.
The phrase is now used for any forced and improbable device—a telltale birthmark, an unexpected inheritance, the discovery of a lost will or letter—by which an author resolves a plot.
Examples occur even in major novels like Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837-38) and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891).
The German playwright Bertolt Brecht parodies the abuse of such devices in Threepenny Opera (1928).
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