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One of the stories out of the Olympics was about those super fast swimsuits.
They may be fast to swim in but they aren’t exactly fast to put on. One athlete reported that he’d worked his personal best down from 17 minutes to less than 10 minutes…to squeeze into the thing.
The first time a piece of attire intended to be worn into a lake, pool or sea was called a suit was back in 1883.
That’s if you don’t count an 1809 citation for birthday suit for you skinny-dippers.
But of course the word suit goes back much, much further. Usually we think of a matching jacket and pants when we hear the word suit and that use of suit goes back almost 600 years, although the suits worn then were of quite a different style.
Wikipedia claims that the suits worn by men today trace their history back at least to Charles II who proclaimed the style of clothing to be worn by his followers at court. As well as a long coat and short pants this included a wig and a hat.
A fancy dressing dude called Beau Brummell moved the male fashion world away from frills about a century later around 1800.
The need for a coat that didn’t get in the way while riding a horse influenced the arrival of the tail coat. But when the recognizable forerunner of the business suit of today first made its appearance about 100 years ago it was considered a very casual alternative.
If you’ve been keeping track you’ll have noticed that the word suit was first applied to matching jacket and pants 600 years ago while old Charles II was last seen walking this earth just over 300 years ago.
Even though Charles II was a Johnny-come-lately as far as the word suit goes I’m going to use his example to delve deeper into the etymology of suit because as I said, it was his followers at court that his decree applied to.
It turns out that the word suit actually means “followers at court.”
The word first turned up in English back in 1297. This was still a time when French was the language of court and so it makes sense that suit came from French.
The “follower” part comes into play when we reach back beyond French and into Latin.
The word root that suit grew from was sequita like sequence from sequere “to follow.”
That first citation back in 1297 has the word suit with both meanings: attendance at court; and also the similarity of attire of those attending court.
The Indo-European word root identified by the American Heritage Dictionary is sek meaning “to follow.”
Looking there at the words that grew from this root I also notice suitor.
If you have a suitor he or she often follows your daily routine with great interest.
The phrase to follow suit relates as well, although in a roundabout way.
Following suit or following in suit does seem to have been a phrase that evolved simply because suit meant “to follow” but it was the popularity of card playing that seems to have popularized the phrase.
Since playing-cards are numbered sequentially the hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs are said to be different suits.
A number of card games require players to reveal their cards according to the suit of the last card played, hence following suit.
Five days a week Charles Hodgson produces Podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, Thursday episodes here at OUPblog. He’s also the author of Carnal Knowledge – A Navel Gazer’s Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia as well as the audio book Global Wording – The Fascinating Story of the Evolution of English.
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Following suit or following in suit does seem to have been a phrase that evolved simply because suit meant “to follow” but it was the popularity of card playing that seems to have popularized the phrase.