poetic justice
UK /pəʊˌɛtɪk ˈd͡ʒʌstɪs/ · US /poʊˌɛtɪk ˈd͡ʒʌstɪs/ noun
- noun (narratology) Synonym of poetical justice (“the idea that in a literary work such as a poem, virtue should be rewarded and vice punished”).
- noun (by extension, generally) The fact of someone experiencing what they deserve for their actions, especially when this happens in an ironic manner.
Synonyms
Etymology
From poetic + justice, a variant of poetical justice, coined by the English literary critic Thomas Rymer (c. 1643 – 1713) in the work The Tragedies of the Last Age Consider’d and Examin’d (1678): see the quotation.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “poetic justice”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details