Other forms: accolades
An accolade is a public honour given for achievement. Receive an accolade.
It began as the ceremony of knighting, which involved an embrace and later a tap of the sword. An accolade is now any formal praise, and the word has softened a great deal.
1nounaccoladeA public honour given for achievement.
“The accolade came forty years after the work was done.”
accolade is an honour.
French accolade, an embrace, from Latin ad plus collum, the neck; a knight was embraced round the neck.
Proto-Indo-European
*kʷel-
Latin
ad-
Vulgar Latin
*accollō — to hug around the neck
Italian
accollato
Occitan
acolada — an embrace
French
accolade
English, today
accolade
Built from
First use appears c. 1591 in the publications of Thomas Lodge, borrowed from French accolade, from Occitan acolada (“an embrace”), from acolar (“to embrace”), from Italian accollato, via Vulgar Latin accollō (“to hug around the neck”), from Latin ad- + collum (“neck”) (English collar) + -āta.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA