vogue words

vogue words

In its meaning ‘popular use or currency’, vogue dates from the 17c, but the expression vogue word (or term) did not come into general use until the 20c. Fowler, who was one of the first to use the term, defined it as a word that ‘emerges from obscurity…into sudden popularity’; he was generally open-minded about their usefulness, and it has been later critics who have tended to pour scorn on the practice of words coming into and going out of fashion. Some vogue uses arise because they are associated with events of particular public interest (such as yomping = marching over heavy terrain, used by Royal Marines in the Falklands war of 1982, and hardly used since). Others fall in the category of ‘popularized technicalities’ (such as chain reaction, parameter, and persona). When Fowler wrote (1926), the vogue words to which he drew attention included acid test, asset, distinctly (as in distinctly colder), far-flung (which he liked, in the right place), frock (= woman's dress), intensive, mentality, unthinkable, and vision (= political foresight). Gowers, writing in 1965, retained acid test and unthinkable (!) and added, among others, coexistence, overtones, psychological moment, and target. More recent vogue uses include crafted (instead of produced or performed, in non-physical contexts), designer (as in designer clothes), icon and iconic, interface, meaningful, must-see (or -have etc., of consumer products), off-message (not following a party line), ongoing, paradigm, parameter, resonate, spin doctor, syndrome, and unravel. See also popularized technicalities. The term buzzword, meaning much the same as vogue word, is first recorded in the 1940s in America.