Origin and history of silhouette

"portrait in black showing the profile," 1792, earlier as portrait à la silhouette (1766), from French portrait à la Silhöuette or Silhoüette, in reference to Étienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), French minister of finance in 1759. The usual reason given (by 1766 in French sources) is that it was a derisive reference to Silhouette's petty economies, unpopular among the nobility, to finance France during the Seven Years' War -- various fashions and arts that appeared skimpy or austere were mockingly dubbed à la Silhouette. But other theories refer it to Silhouette's brief tenure in office.

The word was used of any sort of dark outline or shadow in profile from 1843; as "fashionable contour of a garment" by 1901. The verb is recorded from 1876, from the noun.

The family name is a Frenchified form of a Basque surname; Arnaud de Silhouette, the finance minister's father, was from Biarritz in the French Basque country; the southern Basque form of the name would be Zuloeta or Zulueta, which contains the suffix -eta "abundance of" and zulo "hole" (possibly here meaning "cave").