dei ex machinis

A form of deus ex machina — Any resolution to a story that does not pay due regard to the story's internal logic and that is so unlikely that it challenges suspension of disbelief, and presumably allows the author, director, or developer to end the story in the way that they desired.

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Meanings

noun
  1. pluralplural of deus ex machina

    Is our salvation to be dependent upon machines; are we to become dei ex machinis?

    c. 1910, George Robert Stow Mead, Some Mystical Adventures, republication edition, Kessinger Publishing, published 1993, →ISBN, →OL, page 11
    2 more examples

    The dei ex machinis and the bug-eyed monsters are both products of man’s imagination — extensions and projections of his own desires, fears and hopes about himself, often revealing more about the sorts of things he believes in — or unconsciously wants to believe in — than he himself recognises.

    1954, Meanjin Quarterly, University of Melbourne, page 211

    Apparitions, marvelous coincidences, and various dei ex machinis endow these true-life fictions with spiritual qualities, useful as new secular verification that God’s plan is[…]

    2007, Susan Miller, Trust in Texts: A Different History of Rhetoric, Southern Illinois University Press, →ISBN, page 90
Cite this entry
APA

dei ex machinis. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dei%20ex%20machinis

MLA

“dei ex machinis.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dei%20ex%20machinis. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dei ex machinis,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dei%20ex%20machinis.

Source: dei ex machinis on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.