Bandwagon

How to spell bandwagon

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce bandwagon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bandwagon mean?

1. nounA cause, activity, or trend that has become fashionable and is attracting many new followers.
2. nounA large decorated wagon that carries a musical band in a parade or procession.

Bandwagon in a sentence

• Investors rushed to join the bandwagon once the share price began to climb.

• The brass players rode the bandwagon at the head of the carnival.

• After the team's winning streak, fans jumped on the bandwagon in their thousands.

• Children waved as the painted bandwagon rolled past with the marching musicians.

Where does bandwagon come from?

Language of origin: Other

This is an American coinage from the first half of the 1800s, formed by simply joining 'band' and 'wagon'. It originally named the large, gaily decorated wagon that carried a musical band at the front of a circus parade or political procession; the showman P. T. Barnum used the actual word in his memoirs of the 1850s. Because clambering aboard such a wagon was a public, visible way of joining the parade, American political writers of the late 1800s turned it into the figurative phrase 'to jump on the bandwagon', meaning to attach oneself to a cause that was clearly winning. The 'band' here is the music-making group, the same sense as a brass band, while 'wagon' descends from the Dutch 'wagen', a borrowing into English in the 1500s for a four-wheeled cart. The single word is easy to misjudge in writing because people are tempted to split it or to double the 'g'.

How the word is built

• band (group of musicians)
• wagon (open vehicle)