skeuomorphic

English

Etymology

From skeuomorph +‎ -ic.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /skjuːəˈmɔːfɪk/

• Audio (Southern England)

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Adjective

skeuomorphic (comparative more skeuomorphic, superlative most skeuomorphic)

1. (originally archaeology) Pertaining to skeuomorphs, obsolete design elements which are retained for familiarity or out of tradition, even though they no longer serve any functional purpose.
   • 1889, Henry Colley March, “The Meaning of Ornament; or its Archæology and its Psychology”, in Transactions of the Lancashire and Chesire Antiquarian Society, volume 7, page 168:

     And just as “expectancy” caused the transfer of thong-work from the flint axe, where it was functional, to the bronze celt, where it was skeuomorphic, it carried the chevrons and cruciforms of basketry to the decoration of earthen vessels.

   • 1895, Alfred C. Haddon, quoting W. H. Holmes, Evolution in Art, page 102:

     “ […] Forms of vessels so derived may be said to have an adventitious origin, yet they are essentially copies, although not so by design” (p. 445). In other words, such pottery is primitively skeuomorphic.

   • 2012 December 23, Alice Rawsthorn, “Design Stars, and Misfires, of 2012”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     [Scott Forstall] was blamed not only for the map debacle, but for filling iPad and iPhone screens with winsome symbols of traditional objects relating to the different functions on those devices, like the “wooden” shelves containing digital books and magazines. I, for one, would be delighted never to see those tacky symbols again, or to hear the word “skeumorphic,” as that style of digital interface design is called.

   • 2013 September 20, Oliver Wainwright, “Google gets out the rolling pin and flattens its logo”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     It is a welcome move in what had become an increasingly noisy world of user-interface design over the past five years, as Steve Jobs's love of skeuomorphic design led to a digital world of everything trying to look like what it was in the real world.

   • 2015, Will Self, “Diary”, in London Review of Books, volume 37, number 5:

     As for the computer screen that is nowadays ever before us, I can recall perfectly the primitive holotype with its horse-trough depth and greenish luminescence; surely its lineal descendants’ capacity to display almost infinite imagery has resulted in this unintended consequence: a leeching of aesthetic interest or engagement; the duff skeuomorphic icons denoting folders and programs have encroached, rendering all local space planar.

Translations

pertaining to obsolete design elements

• German: skeuomorph

Further reading

• “skeuomorphic”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.