Everything is Iconic nowadays
A most "infuriatingly ubiquitous cliché" as Jonathan Meades described the use of this word in his brilliant 2009 article in Intelligent Life magazine. http://moreintelligentlife.co.uk/story/adjective-age.
The Newcastle Evening Chronicle even described a local nightclub, LQ, as "iconic"! The Oxford Galleries building has been the site of a number of popular nightspots for many a generation and it is well known through the North-East, but it is not iconic - although to be fair, in one of its incarnations, it was called IKON. http://novumcastellum.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/end-of-era-for-newcastle-city-night-spot.html. It's sloppy journalism, but you can't exactly blame them when the likes of the Times newspaper and the BBC are at it as well. The word is ubiquitous.
During the BBC's Jubilee coverage, as they followed the flotilla down the Thames, every other building or landmark was described as iconic. Same with the Olympic 2012 coverage and the Sochi 2014 Olympic coverage. It boils my P**S!
Another local paper, the Sunderland Echo, is also guilty of this, but it goes further and applying it to things that don't even exist! Last year, Sunderland council announced it was scrapping the proposed novel and innovative design for a new bridge crossing over the River Wear, owing to the potential construction costs, and a more modest, conventional structure would be built instead. Whilst I was disappointed that the original plans were scrapped, I was sort of relieved because it was becoming known as the iconic bridge.
As soon as plans for this bridge were unveiled, the Echo declared the structure to be "iconic" and henceforth it was called the iconic bridge. To make matters worse it gave iconic a capital I to make it a proper noun - the Iconic Bridge of Sunderland. FFS!
Iconic means relating to, resembling, or having the character of an icon, which itself derives from a Greek word signifying no more than a likeness, a portrait or an image. Historically, an icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches which, in obedience to the commandment not to make "graven images", strict rules were applied to the creation of religious images.
In the modern usage, iconic can mean an image, picture, or representation, sign or likeness that stands for an object; a symbol — i.e. a name, face, picture, edifice or even a person readily recognized as having some well-known significance or embodying certain qualities, a literal or figurative meaning.
But nowadays, it is used in almost any sense: "notable, celebrated, zealously promoted, revered, long established, covert, authentic, enviable, easily recognised, memorable, important, estimable, stereotypical and atypical, representative and unusual, cliquey and popular, recherché and accessible, and—like the word itself—unavoidable." (Meades 2009 Intelligent Life).
I read this at the time and it struck a chord because I was getting sick of the word cropping up everywhere. I had noticed that I was starting to use it more and more. You can't read a newspaper nowadays without seeing the word used incorrectly at least once.
The Newcastle Evening Chronicle even described a local nightclub, LQ, as "iconic"! The Oxford Galleries building has been the site of a number of popular nightspots for many a generation and it is well known through the North-East, but it is not iconic - although to be fair, in one of its incarnations, it was called IKON. http://novumcastellum.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/end-of-era-for-newcastle-city-night-spot.html. It's sloppy journalism, but you can't exactly blame them when the likes of the Times newspaper and the BBC are at it as well. The word is ubiquitous.
During the BBC's Jubilee coverage, as they followed the flotilla down the Thames, every other building or landmark was described as iconic. Same with the Olympic 2012 coverage and the Sochi 2014 Olympic coverage. It boils my P**S!
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| Sunderland's "Iconic" Bridge |
As soon as plans for this bridge were unveiled, the Echo declared the structure to be "iconic" and henceforth it was called the iconic bridge. To make matters worse it gave iconic a capital I to make it a proper noun - the Iconic Bridge of Sunderland. FFS!
Iconic means relating to, resembling, or having the character of an icon, which itself derives from a Greek word signifying no more than a likeness, a portrait or an image. Historically, an icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches which, in obedience to the commandment not to make "graven images", strict rules were applied to the creation of religious images.
In the modern usage, iconic can mean an image, picture, or representation, sign or likeness that stands for an object; a symbol — i.e. a name, face, picture, edifice or even a person readily recognized as having some well-known significance or embodying certain qualities, a literal or figurative meaning.
But nowadays, it is used in almost any sense: "notable, celebrated, zealously promoted, revered, long established, covert, authentic, enviable, easily recognised, memorable, important, estimable, stereotypical and atypical, representative and unusual, cliquey and popular, recherché and accessible, and—like the word itself—unavoidable." (Meades 2009 Intelligent Life).
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