Supermodel

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A highly successful and recognized fashion model who often appears on high-profile runways and in major advertising campaigns
2. An individual celebrated for exceptional beauty and talent in the modeling industry, frequently featured in prestigious magazines and advertisements
3. A prominent figure in fashion known for representing top brands and designers, often gaining widespread fame and influence in popular culture

Etymology: The word is a plain compound: "super-", from Latin "super" meaning "above" or "beyond", attached to "model", which English took from French and Italian in the sense of a person posed for an artist. Combined, the pieces describe someone who stands above an ordinary model. Its first recorded appearance dates from 1942, but the term stayed quiet for decades before it became common in the late 1980s, when a small group of fashion models became famous enough to be treated as celebrities in their own right. The popular story that the word was coined by the model Janice Dickinson is a misattribution. She is often credited with it, yet the 1942 example shows the term was already in print long before she was working. Its rise in the 1980s is better understood as a change in how the fashion industry and the press treated certain models than as the invention of a single person.

Synonyms: model, fashion model, top model, runway model