What's the difference between an ascot and a cravat?

In general English language use ascot and cravat are pretty much the same, with AmE preferring ascot while BrE preferring cravat (for the modern garment).

On Danbooru, they appear to describe different neckwear; both ascot and cravat have slightly different definitions. In particular ascot seems to place emphasis on having two "wide-tipped" tails. Though this now sounds like it overlaps with neckerchief.

In practice... both tags seem to be used all over the place, usually for "frillier" neckwear that don't seem to fit under neckerchief (the ones that European noblemen are noted to wear). Occasionally some posts are double-tagged with both ascot and cravat for the same neckwear e.g. post #4620242 (that I think is an earlier 'cravat').

So... I think we need to disambiguate those tags somehow. Or merge them. Any thoughts?

Edit:
Overall, seems like:

• Cravat gets used either for the frilly ruffled neckwear thing (what Wikipedia calls a Cravat_(early), or the old style non-frilly cravat that resembles a 'broader' necktie (also looped in together under Cravat_(early) on Wikipedia).
• The neckwear worn by certain Touhou characters (e.g. Flandre, Reimu) don't usually get tagged cravat (nor neckerchief). These tend to be frilly or have folds, but aren't as ruffled as the 'European nobleman cravat'.
• Meanwhile ascot gets consistently used for the abovementioned Touhou neckwear. But it also gets plopped down on the extra-ruffled 'European nobleman' "cravat_(early)" thingy. And sometimes for side-tie neckties or any of the ones with broader tips (i.e. what would be described as an "ascot tie" in modern American English).

Yeah, I've always felt the wikis for both those tags were horrible. While in theory we might be able to make some distinction between them, having taggers actually follow that distinction would likely be impossible. The easiest thing to do would probably be merge them. Hell, maybe get some people to use jabot while we're at it.

Personally I consider ascots to be more 'necktie' like (like Reimu's and Flandre's and Fred Jones'), with cravat being more 'napkin' or 'bib-like' (resembling the modern garment that would be called jabot nowadays). Though this be me being influenced by fantasy literature and games where the nobleman's "ruffled napkin/bib" thingy usually gets consistently called a cravat. Most notably being Fire Emblem Awakening Virion having an entire character support event dedicated to him ranting that his neckwear is a "cravat" and not a "bib". Doing a cravat + anime search on Google Images also provides similar results.

Though yes, this distinction might not be practical to follow. And the easiest solution, as it is usually, is to just merge the two (or three) tags.

(That said, this does wind up with a single odd tag that covers a wide disparate range of neckwears that look quite different between the 'necktie' and 'bib-napkin' groups.)

Edit: Or we could move out the 'bib-napkin' cravats into jabot, I suppose. But that one sounds like a more obscure name, though it does have the advantage of being far less ambiguous.

I don't think having them called cravats is technically wrong. From my limited research, cravat seems to be a bit of an umbrella term for all styles of "neck cloth". However, if we were to keep all current tags, I think this would be easiest to enforce:

Ascot: Standard neckwear, even if it doesn't have two tails. While many touhou characters seem to have been originally drawn with "true" ascots with the tails, fanart isn't always consistent and trying to convince people touhou ≠ ascot would not be feasible.

Cravat: Tucked in the shirt bib thing. Think Sir Crocodile.

Jabot: Anything overly frilly. Edgeworth comes to mind.

Neckerchief: Stuff with two pointed tails. Stuff like Fred would probably fall under this incorrectly, but much like ascot I think the association with sailor neckerchiefs is too strong to easily call it something else.

These would be some significant changes if it were to go through, and I don't trust myself with that sort of power unchecked, so I welcome any feedback or suggestions.

from the wikipedia article

The modern British "cravat" is called an ascot in American English.

That seems to be the problem

I'd say that as danbooru uses american english we stick to merriam webster definitions

ascot

: a broad neck scarf that is looped under the chin

cravat

a band or scarf worn around the neck
2 : necktie

jabot

1 : a pleated frill of cloth or lace attached down the center front of a woman's blouse or dress I think this is what best describes reimu
2 : a fall of lace or cloth attached to the front of a neckband and worn especially by men in the 18th century

As we can see and in actuality cravat is the vaguest of the three and often used interchangeably with ascot, as cattywampus said we could use it for the tucked in shirt or what they wear in the military for the moment at least

I think then it's safe to use alias ascot to jabot and leave the alias until people have time to learn it.

if we want to distinguish the one Edgeworth wears we can make jabot_(baroque)

Cattywampus said:

I don't think having them called cravats is technically wrong. From my limited research, cravat seems to be a bit of an umbrella term for all styles of "neck cloth". However, if we were to keep all current tags, I think this would be easiest to enforce:

Ascot: Standard neckwear, even if it doesn't have two tails. While many touhou characters seem to have been originally drawn with "true" ascots with the tails, fanart isn't always consistent and trying to convince people touhou ≠ ascot would not be feasible.

Cravat: Tucked in the shirt bib thing. Think Sir Crocodile.

Jabot: Anything overly frilly. Edgeworth comes to mind.

Neckerchief: Stuff with two pointed tails. Stuff like Fred would probably fall under this incorrectly, but much like ascot I think the association with sailor neckerchiefs is too strong to easily call it something else.

These would be some significant changes if it were to go through, and I don't trust myself with that sort of power unchecked, so I welcome any feedback or suggestions.

I think the issue is that these would be ultimately unenforceable. I've never heard the term "jabot" before this thread. I know neckerchief but I didn't know it was a tag.

I think it would be best, for the sake of usability, to go the alias route.

For context, neckerchief mostly exists because of serafuku and all the similar variants with the sailor collar.

Not really an easy solution here

cravat and ascot are the same in contemporary usage even if they have quite interesting etymological origins while between both of them cravat is by far the vaguest since by some usages it can be extended to any neckwear. More importantly they are almost exclusively malewear and there are two different ways to wear it, either as a tucked-in cloth or a wide necktie, which already causes a problem of ambiguity in some illustrations and at the same time either looking very different to what's actually in ascot.

Yeah it seems what we tag ascot is best described by jabot, but following what veraducks pointed out the term is not even in some dictionaries.

Apart from some ambiguously wide pieces of cloth the ascot tag may be the wrongest tag on danbooru yet the obvious solution of dumping it into jabot and forcing people to learn a new word is not a nice one

BUR #6474 has been approved by @evazion.

create alias cravat -> ascot

They're basically used interchangeably. Multiple people have admitted they can't tell the difference, and while cravat may have had historical differences, they are no longer relevant.

Yeah, I don't like it innately but I can't really argue against it.

-1 I don't think I could ever tag cravats with the ascot tag. They're just not.

I personally use ascot for the frilly ones and cravat for those small ties.
They are different things, and i don't think a merge of both is the way to go.
Then again, like nnt i can't suggest a better alternative other than "update the wiki" (noone reads wikis)...

I still can't see how what we have in ascot has anything to do with the real world thing, if anything I'd prefer the reverse alias since by some definitions it can be a cravat, and I have trouble finding relevant results in google for the ruffled thingy by ascot.

Someone probably started using the term with no reason for touhou characters and everyone followed like sheep (me included, I had never heard of ascots before danbooru so I started tagging them according to how they were used here).

Now that you mention this instance of their design is close enough (post #1486300) to the formal ascot tie seems it was applied indiscriminately later.

I do highly suspect that was the case. Art started out with two tails and looked just enough like an ascot to warrant the tag, then as art evolved and simplified people used it regardless. If there were a merger, I would be in favor of leaving cravat. People probably wouldn't be too happy about it, but at least then we could have a wiki entry that actually matched the things being tagged (have you seen ascot? makes zero sense).

I would not put everything under jabot. It implies a sort of elaborate ornateness that most "ascots" just don't have.

Ultimately it would be nice to find a solution where the formal menswear cravats could still be searched for, but they're so infrequent that it would be a bearable loss if it sorted this out.

The bulk update request #6474 (forum #192729) has been approved by @evazion.