vignette [ME] In French a vignette is a ‘little vine’, and the word was once an architectural term for a carved representation of a vine, while in design and book production it referred to decorative depictions of foliage. From the mid 18th century a vignette became a design that shaded off into the background without a definite border. Restriction to visual features ended in the late 19th century when the word assumed its usual modern sense, ‘a brief evocative description, account or episode’.