Word To Use Today: tuxedo.

In Britain we call tuxedos (or tuxedoes) dinner jackets. 

If you are required to wear one to an event then the invitation will probably say black tie and not mention the jacket at all.

Yes, it is odd.


Illustration by Loris Gerber Loris_85. The frilly shirt is unusual round here nowadays. 

Mind you, if you are female and are invited to a black tie event then you will be expected to wear neither a black tie nor a dinner jacket, but something much less cosy and comfortable.

Something like this:


Jean-Paul Gaultier, 1997. Wikimedia commons

A funeral is conventionally a black tie event, in that it is conventional for men to wear black ties, but under no circumstances should anyone wear black tie. Black tie is reserved for celebrations and wearing one at a funeral would appear unkind, to say the least.

The difference between a dinner jacket and a tuxedo is mostly geography, but the other difference is that a dinner jacket is designed to allow a man to merge into the woodwork, and a tuxedo is designed to allow him to shine under a spotlight.

But that's largely down to geography, too.

Word To Use Today: tuxedo. This is the North American word for dinner jacket. A country club in Tuxedo Park, New York, gave this garment its name in the 1800s. The name of the garment is often shortened to tux.