vintage
pronunciation
How to pronounce vintage in British English:
UK [ˈvɪntɪdʒ]
How to pronounce vintage in American English:
US [ˈvɪntɪdʒ]
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- Noun:
- a season's yield of wine from a vineyard
- the oldness of wines
Word Origin
- vintage
- vintage: [15] The vintage is etymologically the ‘taking away of wine’. The word’s ultimate source is Latin vindēmia ‘grape gathering’, a compound noun formed from vīnum ‘wine’ (source of English wine) and dēmere ‘take away, take off’ (which in turn was a compound verb based on emere ‘buy, take’). This passed into English via Old French vendange as vendage, which by association with vintner [15] (another derivative ultimately of Latin vīnum) soon changed to vintage.It continued at first to be restricted to the general sense ‘grape crop’. The specific application to the crop of a particular year did not begin to emerge until the 18th century, and this led at the end of the 19th century to the broad use of the word for ‘year when something was produced’. Connotations of ‘oldness’ were encouraged by its application to ‘vintage cars’, first recorded in 1928.=> vine, vintner, wine
- vintage (n.)
- early 15c., "harvest of grapes, yield of wine from a vineyard," from Anglo-French vintage (mid-14c.), from Old French vendage, vendenge "vine-harvest, yield from a vineyard," from Latin vindemia "a gathering of grapes, yield of grapes," from comb. form of vinum "wine" (see wine (n.)) + stem of demere "take off" (from de- "from, away from" + emere "to take;" see exempt). Sense shifted to "age or year of a particular wine" (1746), then to a general adjectival sense of "being of an earlier time" (1883). Used of cars since 1928.
Example
- 1. All this points to a smaller , but high quality , vintage .
- 2. The vintage year is supposed to be when the fund has its final " close " and stops fund-raising .
- 3. It was an unusual statement for the head of a technology firm , but it was vintage steve jobs .
- 4. It is a colorful , sunny space , decorated with a hodgepodge of vintage finds and her own creations .
- 5. Several new robots appear in dark of the moon , including vintage ones from the original 1980s tv show and comics .