i have been seeing the word ‘bespoke’ lately and i am at a loss to find what it means. i am inferring that there is some sort of aristocratic connotation, but that’s all that i can make of it. can anyone help me?
I see this word when dealing with English (and Irish) custom made cabinetry. I dont really see it used elsewhere, but you could use it in place of “custom made” or similar phrases.
not the verb, btw.
that makes sense…thanks mikeg.
‘Bespoke’ is an odd word. I went to dictionary.com, my Reference of Choice (cue weird Christopher Walken dance :D) and found two basic defintions:
[ul]
[li]To give a sign of or indicate or communicate in some way.[/li][li]Custom-made.[/li][/ul]A bespoke tailor? A tailor who makes custom-made clothing, of course. 
Odd how many words in this language simply make no sense.
My own view of the stymology would be along the lines of “spoken for” products. i.e. you are in the cabinetmakers shop and you see a lovely bow front chest of drawers in figured tiger maple “I want it” ‘Its spoken for’ gets shortened to bespoke,
My etymological dictionary (Concise Oxford, pub. Oxford Univ Press) gives bespoke as the past tense of bespeak (not a word I hear used much by the way). Apparently bespeak means:
speak or call out; speak for, order; speak to, address; tell of, indicate.
So that would suggest that a bespoke something has been made according to the way you described it to the guy who made it for you, not that it’s been spoken for. I can confirm we use it to mean “custom made”.
I work in Irish property law and we use this word all the time. It’s basically a fancy word for “ordered” (i.e. We bespoke a copy of the land certificate…)
“Bespoke” or custom-made shoes were for a long time the mark of a gentleman. This is where I know the term from.
Here in Brit-land it’s not a word we use often, except in certain trades where ‘made to order’ is an important distinction. So we have many tailoring establishments offering both ‘off the peg’ and ‘bespoke’ suits, meaning ready-to-wear and made-to-order respectively.
everton hit it correctly in an etymological sense. (minor nitpick–it’s actually the past participle of bespeak).
I think the word was so obsolete by the time many Brits originally migrated to the USA, that the word didn’t appear here(US) in a genral context until recently.
handsomeharry–in what context have you seen this used, seeing as how you are in Oklahoma? They do a lot of custom work out there?