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À la modeMeaningFashionable. Also, in the USA, a dessert served with ice cream. OriginThis, of course, has a French origin and is one of the earliest French phrases to have been adopted into English. It is referred to in John Selden's Laws of England, 1649:
The term was anglicized as a noun - alamode, which was a form of glossy black silk. This is listed in a 1676 edition of The London Gazette:
See also - other French phrases in English. Phrasefinder is also on
Tudor Phrases and Sayings - a book on the meanings and origins of the phrases and sayings that Shakespeare and Henry VIII used that we use still use every day. |
Americans are familiar with this phrase as meaning 'with ice cream'. There are various stories concerning how this came about but, as they aren't reliably documented, I'll not repeat them here. Suffice it to say that, however the phrase was coined in that context, it had happened by 1903 when it appears in an edition of Everybody's Magazine:
