Style denotes marks that bring things into being, fusing appearance with essence

Evidence

From the Latin for pencil or pillar, “style” denotes marks, the lineating that brings a thing into being. While colloquialisms oppose style to substance, it is tricky to actually disentangle the two, since style simultaneously augurs “semblances, referring to how things generally seem, look, or appear” and vests essences, what is definitional for such “things.” At once appearance and essence, style also straddles purpose and purposelessness: even though in fashion the de rigueur adjective for style is “effortless,” style often precisely indicates deliberateness, exertion, and target beyond the haphazard. And, as a classification of a certain place, person, period, or proclivity, style provides a heuristic for history; a style category grasps specificity stamped in time. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 27

Categorization

• DEFINE: The etymological and conceptual unpacking of ‘style’ itself.
• XREF: connects to: Beauty emerges from fitting use of materials at hand — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 519