| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| vogue |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  v g |
| NOUN: | 1. The prevailing fashion, practice, or style: Hoop skirts were once the vogue. 2. Popular acceptance or favor; popularity: a party game no longer in vogue. See synonyms at fashion. | | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: vogued, vogue·ing or vogu·ing, vogues
To dance by striking a series of rigid, stylized poses, evocative of fashion models during photograph shoots. | | ETYMOLOGY: | French, from Old French, probably from voguer, to sail, row, of Germanic origin. See wegh- in Appendix I. V., after the fashion magazine Vogue. | | WORD HISTORY: | The history of the word vogue demonstrates how sense can change dramatically over time even while flowing, as it were, in the same channel. The Indo-European root of vogue is *wegh–, meaning “to go, transport in a vehicle.” Among many other forms derived from this root was the Germanic stem *w ga–, “water in motion.” From this stem came the Old Low German verb wogn, meaning “to sway, rock.” This verb passed into Old French as voguer, which meant “to sail, row.” The Old French word yielded the noun vogue, which probably literally meant “a rowing,” and so by extension “a course,” and figuratively “reputation” and later “reputation of fashionable things” or “prevailing fashion.” The French, who have given us many fashionable things, passed this noun on as well, it being first recorded in English in 1571.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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