fashion

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈfæʃ.ᵊn/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English fasoun, facioun,^[2][3] borrowed from Anglo-Norman fasun, Old French façon “face, appearance; construction, design; manner”,^[4][5] from Latin factiō (“a making, doing; a group acting together”),^[4][2] from facere (“to make”),^[4][2] from Proto-Indo-European *dhe- (“to set, put”).^[4] It is a doublet of faction.^[2][5] The verb is from the noun.^[2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Physical make, form, shape, appearance: probably about 1300, in Sir Beves of Hamtoun,^[2] about 1300 in Etymonline^[4] and before 1300 in the OED.^[6]

Semantic evolution

A particular style or manner of make or dress is from the late 14th century,^[4][2] and a prevailing custom or mode of dress in a place and time from the late 15th century.^[4] Word Origins notes that someone out of fashion in the early 1500s was “out of shape”, and that the sense of a popular style of clothes or behaviour developed in the mid-16th century;^[7] Shakespeare has both in fashion and out of fashion, about 1600.^[4] After a fashion, “to a certain extent”, is from the 1530s,^[4] and conformity to the tastes of fashionable society from the 1630s.^[4] Fashion plate, a magazine picture of the latest dress, is from 1851, and a well-dressed person by the 1920s.^[4] The verb, “to shape, form”, is from 1413, in Lydgate.^[2] In western English dialect fashion is also a disease of horses, an altered form of farcy.^[8][3]

Timeline

• c. 1300 – form, shape.^[2][4]
• late 14th century – a style, manner.^[4]
• 1413 – verb, to shape.^[2]
• late 15th century – prevailing custom.^[4]
• 1530s – after a fashion.^[4]
• mid-16th century – popular style of dress.^[7]
• 1851 – fashion plate.^[4]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A popular or current style, especially of clothing.
2. The business of designing and selling clothes.
3. A manner or way of doing something: in an orderly fashion.
4. (archaic) Kind, sort; shape or form.

Verb

1. To give shape or form to; to make.
2. To adapt or fit to a purpose.

Word family

• fashioner
• fashionless
• antifashion
• antifashionable
• fashionable
• fashionista
• fashionmonger
• new-fashioned

Related words

• fact
• faction
• factional
• factor
• factorial
• factory
• feature
• feat

Usage notes

Fashion is the broadest of several words for a prevailing manner of dress or behaviour;^[9] style suggests distinction, mode and vogue a current preference.^[9]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
9. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin