Other forms: homages
Homage is respect paid openly to someone or something you admire. A film shot for shot after Hitchcock is homage; so is the minute of silence before kick-off for a player who has died.
The phrase to learn is pay homage to — you pay homage to a teacher, to the dead, to a tradition. Used that way it is uncountable, but when it names a made thing it becomes countable: the album is a homage to Motown, the restaurant is an homage to her grandmother's kitchen. Its old meaning is a ceremony, a vassal kneeling before his lord and swearing service. Pronunciation splits the language in two — British HOM-ij, American oh-MAHZH with the h left silent — which is why you will see both a homage and an homage in print. Homage announces its debt; a rip-off hides it.
1nountributePublic respect and honour shown to someone or something.
“Thousands filed past the coffin to pay homage.”
2nounhomageA work of art, film or music made to honour another artist and show what it owes them.
“The whole opening sequence is a homage to silent cinema.”
3nounfeudalIn feudal history, the formal act by which a vassal declared loyalty to a lord.
“The barons did homage to the new king within the month.”
homage is a mark of respect.
Medieval Latin homināticum named the service a vassal owed, and it was built on Latin homō, a man — in medieval use, a lord's man. Old French made it homage and English took it whole. To pay homage was to kneel and declare yourself somebody's man, which is a long way from copying a camera angle.
Latin
homō — a man, in Medieval Latin a vassal
Medieval Latin
homināticum — homage, the service of a vassal or 'man'
Old French
homage
Middle English
homage
English, today
homage
From Middle English homage, from Old French homage, hommage, from Medieval Latin homināticum (“homage, the service of a vassal or 'man'”), from Latin homō (“a man, in Medieval Latin a vassal”) + -āticum. The American pronunciations in and with silent h are due to confusion with the nearly synonymous doublet a doublet of hommage, which is indeed pronounced.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
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