marquee signing

[eddiek]

the above phrase seems to be popular for football club signings but I fail to see the connection with the original meaning Can anyone explain ?

[Buenchico]

I'm guessing that it comes from American English. Our transatlantic cousins use 'marquee' to mean "canopy over entrance to large building". (That's taken directly from the Concise Oxford Dictionary).

A 'theater marquee' (to use a US spelling) is where the name of the star performer is displayed, as here:
http://www.rollingwit...Theatre%20Marquee.jpg
So a 'marquee player' is one who, if he were an actor, would have his name on the marquee.

Well, it's as credible as anything else that I can think of!

Chris

[jno]

that's also what I would have said.

http://vocabulary-voc...ictionary/marquee.php

[ABerrant]

Indeed, the US term 'marquee' is intended to convey a banner which draws attention and is also used in web design for scrolling text; an attention grabbing feature no longer permitted on AnswerBank but still present in threads from yesteryear...

http://www.theanswerb...ul/Question33570.html

[jno]

ABerrant, a user late one Saturday night a few years back showed people how to do this, on provision of their membership number (or something of the sort); it looked suspiciously like a scam - numerous users had to get themselves new logins afterwards - and the Ed removed the facility for good.

[ABerrant]

When HTML tags were given free rein on this site all AB-users could implement the Marquee tag to produce the scrolling effect, however it is now the preserve of the AB Editors, either within their own posts...

http://www.theanswerb...g/Question998881.html

...or to activate the failed attempts of others...

http://www.theanswerb...8.html#answer-5725528