The most notable or most highly prized feature of a group or series; the star attraction. Originally, from the 1790s or so, this French term always referred to a meal’s greatest delicacy (an appropriate matter of concern to French palates). By the mid-nineteenth century the term had been transferred to other outstanding items, at least in English. Thackeray, in an essay (1840) about art, stated: “To supply the picture lover with the pièces de résistance of the feast.”