Word: fins
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Certain expressions can be rendered only in French. Esprit de corps. Joie de vivre. Cherchez la femme. Croissant. They don't really work in translation. And that is true of fin de siecle. "End of the century" sounds flat and clunky. It doesn't carry the suggestion conveyed by the original of hectic decay and a sort of perfumed dying fall...
When the expression fin de siecle first appeared in France roughly 100 years ago, it meant modern and up-to-date, but it quickly acquired a very negative connotation, and people spoke of a sickness -- la maladie de fin de siecle. The term was applied to anything thought to be corrupt, febrile, degenerate...
...optimistic, progress-obsessed U.S., the fin de siecle had a different tone and temper. The new century seemed to be the new frontier, and predictions about what it would bring were rampant. Many were accurate, from airplanes to television to freeways to disposable bottles. There were some howlers as well, including the forecast that autos would make streets as quiet as country lanes, that there would be no trees left in America by 1920, and that by the end of the 20th century, blacks would constitute about two-thirds of the U.S. population...
...that? Because A Midsummer Night's Dream is over. The End. El Fin. You'll never see it again. (Or at least not until the Boston Ballet decides to perform it again in another season...
Shaw contrives this plot to emphasize the richness of his characters, who flaunt themselves shamelessly in the attempt to cope with the fin-de-siecle...