manneken

Mannequin comes through French from Dutch manneken, little man, a diminutive of man. The form appears in Low Countries commercial contexts before entering French fashion vocabulary in the 17th and 18th centuries. Scale and craft drove the semantics first.

In French, mannequin referred to a model figure and later a fashion model person. The term thus split between object and human display labor. Commerce made both meanings profitable.

English borrowed mannequin in the 19th century, primarily for shop display figures. Department store culture entrenched the nonhuman sense, while fashion media preserved the human one. One spelling carried two bodies.

Today digital avatars challenge physical mannequins, but storefront torsos remain iconic. The word still stages aspiration in glass. Language here is choreography for buying.