- stylish
- stylish, *fashionable, modish, smart, chic, dashing can mean conforming to the choice and usage of those who set the vogue (as persons of wealth and taste or often the avant- garde).Stylish is likely to stress currency and, correspondingly, transitoriness{
a stylish address in the new part of the city
}{recently it has been more stylish to assume that the author of a story is a complete victim and tool, either of his purse and social position or of his parents' neuroses and theories about child-raising— Smart
}{a former college classmate of mine, ... he had been a big wheel under the elms, a miracle of scholarship and coordination, and classified, in the jargon then stylish, as a snake, or suave operator— Perelman
}{she has restored delight ... to poetry, has written her poems with the completest possible clarity (here you will find no stylish obscurantism, so dear to the avant-garde)— Charles Jacksony
}Fashionable is often interchangeable with stylish{a fashionable neighborhood
}{it has become . . . fashionable to sneer at economics and emphasize "the human dilemma"— Mailer
}but fashionable is distinctly more likely to imply conformance to what is established and generally accepted than to a transitory or restricted vogue{the Episcopal church—that's kind of the fashionable church in Paterson, where the nicest people go, or at least the ones with the most money— Chidsey
}{one of the rare French intellectuals who has the courage to be publicly and outspokenly pro-American in France, a country where it is nowadays fashionable to ridicule the United States— Padover
}Modish stressesv conformity to the latest styles{all the ornaments deemed essential to a modish Victorian drawing room— New Yorker
}but sometimes it suggests a step beyond what is describable as stylish or fashionable and may apply to what from another point of view might be called daring, extreme, or startling{tend to regard the pursuit of the new as necessarily silly and modish— Bentley
}{nothing is so transitory as the modish. It is on the way out at the very moment that it comes in— J. M. Brown
}{he was English enough to feel a contempt for modish philosophers who went about preaching a profitable brand of nihilism, blandly informing their fellow creatures that they were already in hell and there was no point in struggling against it— Wain
}Smart comes close to modish in suggesting the height of what is stylish or fashionable, but it implies a position in the forefront of what is acceptably stylish or fashionable rather than one beyond this point{he was handsome, he was rich, he was a sportsman and he was good company. ... he had been long established as one of the smartest men in London— Maugham
}{her college set had stayed rigidly in a zigzag path through the town, traversing a few hotel bars, nightclubs, and eating places which they considered smart— Wouk
}{black is often used in smart, sophisticated interiors— Hazel & Julius Rockow
}Chic is sometimes used simply as an equivalent to modish or smart{the good corporation wife does not make her friends uncomfortable by clothes too blatantly chic— Whyte
}or even of fashionable{whether or not he [the artist] liked it, he became chic— Harper's
}However it may not imply conformity to the latest style so much as an effectiveness in style which suggests the exercise of a knack or skill and the achievement of distinction{the natural elegance which enables her to look chic in camouflaged parachutist's overalls— Edmond Taylor
}{decided to put her culinary tricks into book form for other women who want to whip up a chic meal— Butcher
}{achieved so great a virtuosity that now he not only can do anything but does everything, fluctuating between a wistful religiosity and a chic diablerie—}}
}{Jntermeyer
}Dashing applies to people or to things which they wear or use; it implies not only stylishness or, more often, modishness but a bold, shining quality that enables one to cut a figure in any group or assemblage{you're willing to be a dashing knight, but you also want to be a careful knight— Gardner
}{he was a tall, handsome, dashing chap . . . whose magnificent disregard for money cut a wide swathe in the social life of the town— Amer. Guide Series: N. J.
}{a pair of dashing young brokers
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
