Dictionary

farthingale en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈfɑɹðɪŋɡeɪl/ (General-American)
• /ˈfɑːðɪŋɡeɪl/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

Hobson-Jobson of earlier forms vardingale, etc., borrowed from Middle French verdugale, from Spanish verdugado, from verdugo (“rod”).

Meanings

1. (historical) A hooped structure in cloth worn to extend the skirt of women's dresses; a hooped petticoat.
   • women […] make trunk-sleeves of wyre and whale-bone bodies, backes of lathes, and stiffe bumbasted verdugals, and to the open-view of all men paint and embellish themselves with counterfeit and borrowed beauties[…]. 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
   • Duchess Meg soon forgot this unworthy wedding-gift, such was her rapture in the other, the so august, appurtenances of her new life. What with her fine silk gowns and farthingales, and her powder-closet, and the canopied bed she slept in—a bed bigger far than the room she had slept in with her sisters, and standing in a room far bigger than her father’s cottage [...] 1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published 1912, →OCLC:
   • As I entered the room, the fire from the large square stove, where the logs were burning lustily, threw a red, flickering light through the wide-open door over the room, which was very deep, and furnished in the old style with high-backed Russia leather chairs, and one of those settees which were intended for farthingales and straight up-and-down positions. 1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 4:
   • In Henry VIII's Great Hall, there were men in doublets and codpieces prancing up and down with women in farthingales. 2003 May 3, Alexander Chancellor, The Guardian:

Forms

Deriveds

farthingale chair

Synonyms

hoop skirt

Translations (4)

fi krinoliini (hooped structure) · sv krinolin (hooped structure) · fr crinoline (hooped structure) · bg кринолин (hooped structure)