Make Your Point > Archived Issues > ROCOCO
Send Make Your Point issues straight to your inbox.
connect this word to others:
When something is as bright, vivid, showy, and flamboyant as an orchid, you call it orchid_____s.
And when it's as fancy, artsy, intricate, and extravagant as an 18th-century European palace, you call it rococo.
(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)
make your point with...
"ROCOCO"
(Thanks for the picture, Wikipedia!)
Above is a room in a German palace. It's decorated in the rococo style: a kind of extremely detailed, highly ornamented way of designing furniture, rooms, ceilings, and entire buildings that was popular in Europe in the 1700s.
If you look closely at a rococo room like the one pictured above, you might see that some of the decor is made from little pieces of shells or pebbles. The word "rococo" might trace all the way back to the same Latin root that gave us "rock."
What we know for sure is that in French, where rocaille means "shell work or pebble work," people added a funny twist to create the word rococo, which they used to label the style of art and architecture that we see above. But this was in about 1830, when that style had all gone out of fashion already and seemed tacky rather than tasteful. And so rococo in French also means "old-fashioned, out of style."
When we took rococo into English, we dropped the "old-fashioned" meaning.
In English, we use "rococo" specifically to mean "related to that elaborate style that was popular in Europe in the 1700s."
And we use it more generally to mean "extremely showy and detailed, sometimes in a way that's tasteless or way overdone."
Pronunciation:
Either "ruh KO KO" or "ro KO KO."
Part of speech:
Adjective: "a rococo story," "their flourishes are rococo."
Other forms:
The noun is "rocococity," pronounced "ruh ko KOSS uh dee."
And an alternate adjective is "rococoesque:" "ruh KO ko ESK."
How to use it:
This word often has a slightly negative tone. To call something rococo is to suggest that it's so complex and so finely decorated that it's just ridiculous.
Talk about rococo art, furniture, rooms, and buildings; rococo clothes, accessories, tattoos, makeup, and hairstyles; rococo music, literature, and speech, etc.
Or, talk in general about something's (or someone's) rococo style, tone, mood, decadence, intricacy, etc.
Or get more specific: rococo touches, details, and flourishes.
examples:
"Nor was French art limited to rococo frippery and blushing pink ladies. It also embodied an internal critique of the old regime. Along with the curves, elegance and flowery garden fetes there were works of great visual austerity and moral severity."
— Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 2 June 2017
"Techies who live on Soylent and attention-deficit drugs all day and then spend their wealth on rococo meals costing hundreds of dollars are living very weird, insular lives."
— Daniel Duane, New York Times, 6 August 2016
"Jim's plan for surviving the apocalypse seems somewhat rococo to me. It's involved. Pick three bug-out locations in different directions from your residences, all of them under 200 miles from your home so you can get there without a full tank of gas in your car. You should also plan three routes to each of your three locations. So that's nine routes in all."
— Stephen Marche, The Guardian, 2 August 2017
has this page helped you understand "rococo"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "rococo" without saying "ornate" or "extravagant."
try it out:
Fill in the blanks: "(In some kind of creative work, like a particular movie poster, album cover, song, album, poem, novel, or movie) is a rococo mess of _____."
Example: "On the cover of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy is a rococo mess of creatures and symbols."
before you review, play:
Spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—let your working memory empty out first.
Our game this month: Anagrams!
Rearrange the letters in the given word to form a word we've studied before. Try to recall its meaning, too.
For example, if I give you DYED, you give me EDDY. If I give you THREAD, you give me DEARTH. And if I give you COTERIES, you give me ESOTERIC.
Try this one today: TIME.
Give yourself 5 points if you can figure out the word without clues. To reveal the clues, hover over the blue text below.
Give yourself 4 points if you figure it out after peeking at the part of speech: Verb.
Give yourself 3 points if you figure it out after peeking at the definition: to squirt out or send out.
Give yourself 2 points if you figure it out after peeking at the first letter: E.
Give yourself 1 point if you figure it out after peeking at the first two letters: EM.
And if you'd like to reveal or review the word, click here.
review this word:
1. The opposite of ROCOCO is
A. NEW.
B. CLEAN.
C. SIMPLE.
2. Writing about Fairyland, a series of children's novels, Stephanie Burt praises their "rococo invention," comparing them to _____.
A. a gleaming golden trophy
B. the dark roots of an upturned tree
C. an all-marshmallow breakfast cereal
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
When something is as bright, vivid, showy, and flamboyant as an orchid, you call it orchid_____s.
"ROCOCO"
(Thanks for the picture, Wikipedia!)
"Nor was French art limited to rococo frippery and blushing pink ladies. It also embodied an internal critique of the old regime. Along with the curves, elegance and flowery garden fetes there were works of great visual austerity and moral severity."
Explain the meaning of "rococo" without saying "ornate" or "extravagant."
Fill in the blanks: "(In some kind of creative work, like a particular movie poster, album cover, song, album, poem, novel, or movie) is a rococo mess of _____."
Spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—let your working memory empty out first.
1. The opposite of ROCOCO is
|