Etymologically
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fashion

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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

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