fashionable

Pluralfashionables

1. 1
   adjective

   Reflecting the current popular trend or style, or shaped by it; widely admired as being in vogue.

   The old warehouse district has become fashionable with artists and young professionals.

   Minimalist interiors are fashionable in design circles at the moment.

   Similarstylish, trendy, chic, modish, popular

   Oppositeunfashionable, outdated, dated, old-fashioned

2. 2
   adjective

   Established or favored by custom; prevailing or current at a particular time.

   Dueling remained fashionable among army officers well into the century.

   Elaborate letter-writing was fashionable in polite society at the time.

   Similarpopular, customary, common, prevalent, accepted

   Oppositeunfashionable, outmoded, unpopular

   Note

   Here the word moves from dress to ideas: the fashionable philosophy, fashionable opinions. The "in vogue" meaning describes a style people admire. This sense reports what custom has settled on at a given time. That is why it pairs so naturally with views, habits and doctrines, and why something can be fashionable in this way without anyone finding it stylish.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A person preoccupied with following current trends in dress and manners; a fop.

   He fancied himself a fashionable, never wearing the same coat twice.

   The drawing room filled with fashionables eager to display the season's newest cuts.

   Similardandy, fop, fashionista, hipster, trendy

   Note

   The adjective turned into a countable noun, and it often travels in the plural: city fashionables, rich fashionables. Thackeray uses it in Vanity Fair, Mark Twain in 1891, and the Chicago Reader still in 1991, often with an edge of mockery. Twain's fashionables come to the opera to show their clothes. In the singular it takes an article: a witty fashionable.

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