Taking a Look at an Icon - the Word Itself

It's everywhere, isn't it?

Photo by Marco Biondi on Unsplash

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of the word icon.

Everyone is an icon. Everything is an icon. Or iconic.

Cher is an icon. LeBron James is an icon. Tom Cruise is an icon. Chocolate chip cookies are iconic. “Wicked” is iconic. McDonald’s is iconic. So are Barbie, Cartier, and Santa Claus and Snickers bars. And Storm Troopers.

I don’t actually know if these people or things have been described as an icon or iconic but 1) it would not surprise me if they had been so described, and 2) it’s just a matter of time before they are. Because everyone and everything is an icon or iconic.

Take a look at this graph I found. Since about 1800, the use of the word appears — well, the word hardly appears. The line indicating its usage is low and flat — like, it’s coded or something. Get out the paddles!

Don’t worry. Around 1980 its usage begins to climb, and over about the next twenty-two years it skyrockets. True, the line also shows usage beginning to drop. But only a little bit. It’s still in the everyone-and-everything-is-an-icon-or-iconic territory.

Okay, you get the picture. So. How did we get here? I don’t know. It’s just, all of a sudden the word is everywhere. This is not something that I need or want to understand, or explain.

And I am not interested in debating whether someone or something is truly an icon. If I read or hear that someone or something is an icon or iconic, fine — I am not going to argue the point. I am just curious about and want to contemplate the current state of lexical affairs.

Last time I checked, an icon was a graphic symbol on a computer screen that I clicked with a mouse pointer to make the computer do something — open a file, move a file, delete a file, and so on. For example, the figure below shows a line of icons at the bottom of a computer screen.

Photo by Joan Gamell on Unsplash

Nowadays, we still call these symbols icons, and we also have them on our ubiquitous phones — but we also call almost everyone and everything else an icon. Where was I when this leap occurred? I guess I wasn’t paying attention, to be so blindsided by this ubiquitous (over)usage.

Anyway, these musings beg the question of what word or words were we using instead of icon or iconic before we started using them? Legend? Idol? Role model? Maybe, but I don’t remember seeing those words all over the place, all the time.

Perhaps we were just more judicious in designating the greats among us. Like the standing ovation — it used to be doled out sparingly but now it’s routine.

And this begs another question — if everyone and everything is an icon or iconic, haven’t we diluted the brand a bit? An icon used to be something rare and special. Now the market’s just flooded with ‘em.

I know this all makes me sound like a bit of a crank. I suppose I am, at least on this matter, because I am just so weary of the words icon and iconic.

But I wonder what will happen once we have lost interest in using these words and they flat-line again. I suppose we will land on something else and work the heck out of that, too.

Maybe the aforementioned idol and role model. Those words are already circulating comfortably in the cultural conversation. I am sure we will figure it out — being at a loss for words has never been a problem, even if we overuse them.

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