When we set up Accolades Marketing in 2005 we choose the name not intending that “Accolades” should ever just be conferred upon us, but that it reflected the
type of clients we wanted to work with – companies that had real ambition and wanted their products and services to be the very best….and to be “Accoladed” by their customers for this reason.
The history of the word “Accolades” is therefore interesting. People usually have to work hard and “stick their necks out” to earn accolades, and this is as it should be. In tracing the word "accolade" back to its Latin origins, we found that it was formed from the prefix ad ("to") + collum ("neck)," which may bring the word collar to mind. A memory of the original literal meaning is preserved in the use of ‘accolade’ to refer to the ceremonial tapping of a sword on a new knight’s neck and shoulders.
In the year 1611 'Accolade' put in its first recorded appearance in the Provençal noun acolada, which was borrowed into French as 'accolade' and then made its way into English. The main current sense ‘a congratulatory expression of approval’ came later, circa 1852, and it is now the recognised word for "praise", "award" or "honour".