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accolade - 4 dictionary results

ac⋅co⋅lade

  [ak-uh-leyd, -lahd; ak-uh-leyd, -lahd]
Use accolade in a Sentence
–noun
1. any award, honor, or laudatory notice: The play received accolades from the press.
2. a light touch on the shoulder with the flat side of the sword or formerly by an embrace, done in the ceremony of conferring knighthood.
3. the ceremony itself.
4. Music. a brace joining several staves.
5. Architecture.
a. an archivolt or hood molding having more or less the form of an ogee arch.
b. a decoration having more or less the form of an ogee arch, cut into a lintel or flat arch.
Origin:
1615–25; < F, deriv. of a(c)colée embrace (with -ade -ade 1 ), n. use of fem. ptp. of a(c)coler, OF v. deriv. of col neck (see collar ) with a- a- 5

Related forms:
ac⋅co⋅lad⋅ed, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To accolade
ac·co·lade   (āk'ə-lād', -läd')   
n.  
    1. An expression of approval; praise.
    2. A special acknowledgment; an award.
  2. A ceremonial embrace, as of greeting or salutation.
  3. Ceremonial bestowal of knighthood.
tr.v.   ac·co·lad·ed, ac·co·lad·ing, ac·co·lades
To praise or honor: "His works are invariably accoladed as definitive even as they sparkle and spark" (Malcolm S. Forbes).

[French, an embrace, accolade, from accoler, to embrace, from Old French acoler, from Vulgar Latin *accolāre : Latin ad-, ad- + Latin collum, neck; see kwel-1 in Indo-European roots.]
Word History: People usually have to stick their necks out to earn accolades, and this is as it should be. In tracing accolade back to its Latin origins, we find that it was formed from the prefix ad-, "to, on," and the noun collum, "neck," which may bring the word collar to mind. From these elements came the Vulgar Latin word *accollāre, which was the source of French accolade, "an embrace." An embrace was originally given to a knight when dubbing him, a fact that accounts for accolade having the technical sense "ceremonial bestowal of knighthood," the sense in which the word is first recorded in English in 1623.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Accolade

Ac`co*lade"\ (#; 277), n. [F. accolade, It. accolata, fr. accollare to embrace; L. ad + collum neck.]

1. A ceremony formerly used in conferring knighthood, consisting am embrace, and a slight blow on the shoulders with the flat blade of a sword.

2. (Mus.) A brace used to join two or more staves.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : accolade
Spanish: paréntesis, corchete,
German: die Klammer,
Japanese: 括弧
More Translations »

accolade 
1623, from Fr., from Prov. acolada from V.L. *accollare, from L. ad- "to" + collum "neck" (see collar). The original sense is of an embrace about the neck or the tapping of a sword on the shoulders to confer knighthood. Extended meaning "praise, award" is from 1852.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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