Driving past an office building under construction in Reston, Virginia, where I live, I noticed posters on the building that said: “Iconic Offices.” While reading a newspaper online, a pop-up ad came up that said, “Make Your Escape Iconic!” It was promoting a hotel in Miami Beach. I was puzzled. Doesn’t iconic mean something venerable that is admired for being distinctive in some way? How can offices that are still being built, or a vacation in Miami Beach, be called iconic?
“Iconic” and “icon” come from the ancient Greek word eikon, which denotes a likeness or an image. In ancient Greece, eikons (so the Oxford English Dictionary says) referred to “statues of victorious athletes executed in a conventional style.” Anyone who has taken a course in art history knows that icons are also small religious paintings, usually of the Madonna or Christ and his disciples. They became popular in Byzantium after Constantine the Great made Christianity the state religion; later, they became popular in Russia. “Icons” now also refer to graphic computer symbols.
Religious icons were so popular after the reign of Justinian that there was a reaction against them, the so-called Iconoclastic Controversy. And many Christians were offended by them. Quoting the Second Commandment, which proscribes graven images, they said that icons were idolatrous. Iconoclasm was also a strong strain in Calvinism. In 16th-century Europe iconoclastic riots took place in many Protestant cities; in 1549, a mob incited by radical Protestant preachers destroyed many of the interior decorations in the old St Paul’s Cathedral. By the 18th century, religious iconoclasm waned. An iconoclast now refers to someone who attacks the conventional wisdom about anything—religion, art, science, government.
For 200 years, the words “icon” and “iconic” fell into disuse. But in the 1960s they gradually became popular, though now they had no connection with religion. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “iconic” refers to something that is “widely recognized and well-established” or something “widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence.”
In recent years, the use of “icon” and “iconic” has soared. Why did the words become so popular? I suspect that writers were tired of the standard adjectives of praise: It’s boring to say that someone or something is famous, impressive, or distinctive. “Iconic” sounds classy.
Now it’s hard to overestimate the popularity of “iconic” and “icon.” In one recent week I read about the iconic Henry David Thoreau, the iconic ballet Swan Lake, the iconic stethoscope, the iconic John Muir, the iconic Jane Austen, the iconic Dow Jones Industrial Average, the iconic Isaac Newton, the iconic polar bear, and the iconic modern Indian play Chand Baniker Pala by Sombhu Mitra.
Washington Post headline writers seem to be infatuated with “iconic.” From November 2016 to early February 2017 it was used (by my count) six times, mainly in the newspaper’s Style section. We learned that “as iconic Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher was a life force to be reckoned with.” We also learned that “In ‘Jackie,’ Natalie Portman plays an iconic first lady as masterful myth-maker.”
To be sure, the adjective’s meaning is hard to nail down. The Macmillan dictionary gives three synonyms—famous, well-known, celebrated. The Merriam-Webster doesn’t give any synonyms. Rather, it issues a warning:
“Icon,” incidentally, is just as popular as “iconic.” In one issue of the Times Literary Supplement I read about two books with “icon” in the title: Reagan: American Icon and Ice Bear: The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon. Clicking on the New York Times‘s website I saw: “Photojournalist visits an icon of welcome for immigrants.”
Will “iconic” and “icon” fade from overuse? Not likely. The words have cachet: The Wall Street Journal now has a section called “Icons,” and Vanity Fair puts out special issues called Vanity Fair Icons. In a recent Washington Post there was the following headline: “An American icon—for all seasons.” (The writer was referring to Frederick Douglass.) A few days later there was yet another reference to “iconic” in the Post‘s Style section: An article about a house that Sally Quinn is selling included this sentence from the real-estate listing: “This is a rare opportunity to own an iconic property in one of the most coveted locations in the Hamptons.”
Soon, I suspect, “iconic” will be found on menus: “Try our iconic Philly Cheesesteak with a side order of our iconic sweet potato fries.” Graphic icons are already on some menus in New York. The city’s health department requires chain restaurants with 15 or more locations to display a salt shaker icon next to menu items or combo meals that contain 2,300 or more milligrams of sodium.
To paraphrase Shelley, if salt icons are here, can sugar icons be far behind?
Stephen Miller is the author, most recently, of Walking New York: Reflections of American Writers from Walt Whitman to Teju Cole.
