シルエット

1759 is central to シルエット because French silhouette comes from Étienne de Silhouette, controller-general of finances under Louis XV from March to November 1759. Étienne was born in Limoges in 1709 and died in Bry-sur-Marne in 1767. CNRTL records French portrait à la silhouette in 1763 and links the name to outline portraits and political mockery. Japanese dictionaries give French silhouette as the source form. The loan entered Japanese through art, poetry, photography, and clothing vocabulary. Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten cites Takamura Kotaro's Dotei in 1914 for the shadow sense and Kajii Motojiro's K no Shoten in 1926 for a drawn silhouette. Daijisen explicitly adds the clothing and object outline sense. The meaning moved from black profile picture and shadow outline to broader shape words used in fashion, product design, and scenery. Modern シルエット can mean a dark outline against light, the outline of a dress, the overall line of a car, or a simplified figure. English silhouette has the same art and outline senses, but Japanese uses it often in clothes talk, as in Aラインシルエット. Fashion magazines also use Iライン and Xライン. French also keeps the personal-name history. Example: この服のシルエットが好きだ.