Accessory

With the arrival of June – and some warmer weather – the season of weddings, garden parties, and events like Royal Ascot has arrived. Time to get dressed up, maybe shop for some new outfits. And don’t forget that you’ll need today’s word to match or coordinate with your finery: an accessory or two.

The word “accessory” has been around for centuries with the meaning of “a subordinate or auxiliary thing; an accompaniment”, but when did it specifically come to be used for such items as a handbag, scarf, or handkerchief?

The answer to that question is: considerably earlier than I would have thought. The OED cites an article in an 1828 edition of La Belle Assemblée, a British women’s magazine, as including the first written mention of the word “accessories”. Fashionable Georgian ladies, it would seem, were as interested in accessorizing their outfits as their twenty-first-century counterparts.

However, although those Georgian ladies would have discussed “accessories”, they wouldn’t have talked about “accessorizing”. The verb didn’t follow the noun until over a century later, being used chiefly in advertising at first (from 1934). It wasn’t until 1961 that the Sunday Times is quoted suggesting that one might “accessorise”.

So there you have it. Now when you’re picking out that necklace or handkerchief to go with your outfit for a summer wedding, you can know that you’re joining with two centuries of other wedding-goers who have also done just that.