n.
- The prevailing fashion, practice, or style: Hoop skirts were once the vogue.
- Popular acceptance or favor; popularity: a party game no longer in vogue. See synonyms at fashion.
To dance by striking a series of rigid, stylized poses, evocative of fashion models during photograph shoots.
[French, from Old French, probably from voguer, to sail, row, of Germanic origin. 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 *wēga-, "water in motion." From this stem came the Old Low German verb wogōn, 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.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
