Why does it sound wrong to my ears when someone says a thing "is aesthetic"? [closed]
Off the top of my head, this is a few of the ways I've heard the word aesthetic used to describe a thing:
- This thing is aesthetically pleasing.
- This thing has a nice aesthetic.
- I like the aesthetics of this thing.
And then there's this one that I've been hearing more of lately:
- This thing is aesthetic.
To my ears, 4 sounds wrong. I may be misunderstanding the meaning of aesthetic, but it sounds weird to say that a thing is itself aesthetic. I think people who say this are using the incorrect word, as if they meant to say a thing is visually pleasing but then swapped it out for aesthetic. I do, however, realize that it's a correct sentence. Why does this sound incorrect when just saying something is visually pleasing or is beautiful or is pretty is not?
Solution 1:
This thing is aesthetic only tells us that the thing has something to do with aesthetics. Often such a sentence conveys that the thing serves some aesthetic function, that it is intended for some aesthetic purpose, without implying anything as to whether the thing serves that function well, as to whether it actually accomplishes the purpose.
For example, suppose that I am explaining to someone how to use a certain gadget, and that after saying 'you use the red thing to turn on the gadget, the blue one to adjust the volume . . .', I am asked 'What about the yellow thing?' The answer may be 'The yellow thing is purely aesthetic'. That would mean that the designers of the gadget intended its yellow component to somehow improve its appearance. In saying this, I would not be implying that the yellow thing actually improves the appearance of the gadget; my saying that it is aesthetic conveys only what it is intended for, and is compatible with my thinking that the thing actually uglifies the gadget.
In this respect, this thing is aesthetic is different from the other three examples in the question, which all convey some kind of a positive reaction to the thing.
Solution 2:
If you take the dictionary definitions such as the Lexico one
1.1 Giving or designed to give pleasure through beauty.
without looking at the examples it is difficult to argue against the use of "this dishwasher is aesthetic" but the examples of use such as the one for the Lexico entry above which is:
the law applies to both functional and aesthetic objects
all point to more general or abstract applications.
The use of 'aesthetic' to describe an object directly jars with me as well, not least because it sounds pretentious. But it seems that 'aesthetic' has only been accepted properly as an English word for about 150 years and the direct description use has been around for quite a while so I'm afraid, as Eliot implies in his answer, that we're just going to have to accept it as an organic change to the English language.
Solution 3:
I think that you have unconsciously given structural bias to your examples, and this tends to confirm your argument that "aesthetic" produces a strange sounding predicative adjective/complement.
1938 Amer. Home Jan. 21/2 The days when grandmamma put a million photographs on the wall in close array and thought the result aesthetic.
1881 W. S. Gilbert Patience i. 22 I am a broken-hearted troubadour, Whose mind's æsthetic, and whose tastes are pure.
1945 I. Gershwin Alessandro the Wise (song) in Lyrics on Several Occasions (1959) 334 Refrain. I'm aesthetic, poetic; To beauty I'm sympathetic. Soldiers. A patron of the arts is Alessandro.
2020 Greybeard WRF "He dismissed the design, which I had considered aesthetic, as being too complicated."