cleopatra's nose
Preserved but no longer current.
It was Blaise Pascal (1623-62) who said, "If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed" (Pensees viii, 29); the allusion, of course, being to the tremendous results brought about by her enslavement through her charm and beauty, first of Julius Caesar and then of Mark Antony.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Examples
Tatoeba sentence #510309 (CC BY 2.0 FR, tatoeba.org, retrieved 2026-07-31)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “cleopatra's nose” mean?
It was Blaise Pascal (1623-62) who said, "If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed" (Pensees viii, 29); the allusion, of course, being to the tremendous results brought about by her enslavement through her charm and beauty, first of Julius Caesar and then of Mark Antony.
Is “cleopatra's nose” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.