Window-shopping became popular pastime along New York’s 5th Avenue back in the days when stores closed at 5 p.m. Passersby would stroll past, gazing at the window displays without intending to purchase anything. The French term for “window shopping,” lecher les vitrines, literally translates as “window-licking.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Window Shopping”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Sarah from San Diego.
Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the program.
Hi, Sarah.
Thanks. Hi.
Oh, and hello to the baby.
Oh, sweet little baby voice.
Sorry, she’s making a lot of noise in the background.
Oh, that’s all right. It’s a sweet little sound.
How can we help you today, Sarah?
Well, my husband and I recently toured the Queen Mary. At one point on the tour, we stopped in front of a glass case in the second class lounge. And the guide said that rather than browse through the shops like in first class, the second class passengers would look at the items in the case and tell the steward what they wanted to buy. And then the steward would go and get the object and the customer would pay.
Well, the guide said this was where the term window shopping originated. But my husband and I have taken this term to mean look without the intent of buying. So this story kind of confused us. Is there a different origin for the term window shopping? Why did it actually originate on cruise ships?
You were good to be suspicious. This sounds like there should be a whole category of words, false etymologies that tour directors. If you’re getting your etymologies from tour guides, you’re doing it wrong.
Yeah, you’re spot on, Sarah. Don’t listen to the tour guides when they say, and that’s how it came to be, because their other facts are likely to be wrong, too. It comes from literally what you’d think, right? Walking down the street, seeing things in the window with no intention to buy or not being able to buy because it was after hours. Very, very simple.
Yeah, exactly what you said. You can find this kind of activity mentioned again and again over the last hundred years, particularly in New York, where the shops on Fifth Avenue would close at 5 p.m. And yet people would go out for the after-dinner stroll and spend a lot of time looking in the windows, which is how New York got this culture of these really expansive window displays, these really elaborate kind of showpieces in the windows that were designed to attract and allure people, you know, when they did have money or when the shops were open.
Oh, okay. So, Sarah, you’re right. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that does. Thank you.
Okay, sure. Thanks for calling.
Thank you very much.
All right, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
And Grant, in French, the term is window licking. L’écher les vautrines. Lick the windows. And you can, you know, if there’s something particularly delightful inside, your hands are on the window, and your nose is pressed against the glass. Some of that cheese, yeah.
By the 1930s, the term window shopping and window shopper was so common there was a very successful play on Broadway called Window Shopping that ran for a few performances.
Oh, really?
And it’s about a proprietor of a department store who tried to get people into a store by putting an actress live in the store windows for two weeks. She would do a strip tease at night, and then she’d do a dress tease in the morning to attract the crowd. She would dress up.
Huh.
I think somebody got a government grant to do that.
Yeah, maybe. 1938? Does that ring any bells?
No.
No.
