Origin and history of tuxedo

man's evening dress for semiformal occasions, 1889, named for Tuxedo Park, N.Y., then the chief "pretentious rural resort" for wealthy New Yorkers and site of a country club where it first was worn, supposedly in 1886.

The name is an attractive subject for elaborate speculation, and connections with Algonquian words for "bear" or "wolf" were proposed. The authoritative Bright, however, says the tribe's name probably is originally a place name, perhaps Munsee Delaware (Algonquian) p'tuck-sepo "crooked river."

The frock coat, now de rigueur in New York, has not replaced the cutaway here, although the Tuxedo jacket is more and more seen and is worn for calling, dinners and the theatre and all evening entertainments, except dancing parties. [Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 1, 1889]

There was a hue and cry raised against the Tuxedo coat upon its first appearance because it was erroneously considered and widely written of as intended to displace the swallow tail. When the true import of the tailless dress coat came to be realized it was accepted promptly by swelldom, and now is widely recognized as one of the staple adjuncts of the jeunesse dorée. [Clothier and Furnisher, August 1889]