Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
salon, saloon (nn.)
have been pulled up and down through the years by the semantic forces of elevation and pejoration, and both words continue to be splendid examples of both euphemism and dysphemism. Salon has kept its original French meanings, “a large reception room in a large house” and “the collection of people likely to be present at a social affair therein”: Mme. Dumas held a salon on Thursdays. Our American penchant for gilding anything not already obviously golden has made us try to attach the suggestion of opulence and high society to more mundane spaces: hence beauty salons, tanning salons, and the like.
A saloon was a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century tavern, and the word came to suggest to many all that was unsavory about drinking and its attendant dissolutions. In an English pub, the saloon bar is a bit more refined than the public bar, and recently some of this elevation has returned to the better saloons in large American cities, although generally the use is self-conscious. But like salon, saloon too has been added to the names of pool halls, barbershops, and muscle-building parlors in an effort to elevate what may still sound and smell like a gin mill or locker room. Also, the saloon on a yacht or passenger ship is a public lounge or parlor, and in Britain a saloon is also an automobile style (what Americans call a sedan).
