slogan
Pluralslogans
- 1A catchphrase linked to a product or service that is being advertised.
Marketers spent months testing the slogan before the product launch.
The brand's slogans evolved with each new advertising campaign.
Similartagline, motto, strapline
Note
Advertising has its own names for the selling phrase. Tagline is the usual trade synonym, and strapline is the British equivalent. Where the motto sense speaks for a party or a movement, this one speaks for something on sale. The test is simple: if the phrase exists to sell a product or service, it belongs here. Motto can stand in loosely, but in marketing talk tagline is the word to reach for.
- 2A distinctive phrase belonging to a person or group, such as a political movement or party, in other words, a motto.
The party adopted a new slogan ahead of the election.
Activists printed the movement's slogans on banners and t-shirts.
Similarmotto, catchphrase, watchword, catchword
Note
The modern sense still carries an old clan custom inside it. The word comes, through earlier sloggorne and slughorn, from Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, 'battle cry', built from words for 'army' and 'a call'. A slogan is still a group's rallying call, only without the fighting, which survives in the old Highland battle cry. P. G. Wodehouse plays on this in Jeeves in the Offing (1960), where 'Safety first' is the Wooster slogan, a family motto worn with comic dignity.
- 3Among Scottish Highland clans or the ancient Irish, a war cry shouted when going into battle.
The Highlanders answered their chief's call with a thunderous slogan.
His bugle Wat of Harden blew; / Pensils and pennons wide were flung, / To heaven the Border slogan rung, / "St Mary for the young Buccleuch!"
1805, Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last MinstrelNote
Here the word stands closest to its Gaelic source, the shout that rallied a host. Walter Scott uses it in The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805): 'To heaven the Border slogan rung, / "St Mary for the young Buccleuch!"' That single cry names both a saint and a chief. The sense is obsolete. In modern prose, write battle cry or war cry instead, since readers will hear slogan as a motto.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of slogan apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
The word comes from earlier forms like slughorn, borrowed from Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm ("battle cry"), from Old Irish slóg ("army," and by extension "crowd") plus gairm ("a call, cry"). These trace back through Proto-Celtic to Proto-Indo-European roots meaning "entourage" and "to call or shout."