Dictionary

nightcloth en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Etymology

From night + cloth.

Meanings

1. A cloth placed over a birdcage, used to simulate the darkness of night and settle the bird(s) into sleep.
   • Though it is midday the apartment is dark, the nightcloth is on the birdcage still. 1997, Anne K. Rose, “The Waltz”, in Double Vision: Twelve Stories, Madison, Conn.: Psychosocial Press, →ISBN, page 63:
   • When the O’Haras were ten paces away, the bird suddenly swooped off the miner’s shoulder—the miner took no notice—and flew to a table on top of which reposed an elegant metal cage with a frilly nightcloth rolled up at the top. […] The fat woman rolled the nightcloth down over the cage and its nearly raped cockatoo and stalked off with it in high outrage. 1976, Jack Foxx [pseudonym; Bill Pronzini], Freebooty: A Novel of Suspense, Indianapolis, Ind.; New York, N.Y.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., →ISBN, pages 69–70:
   • Quiet settled over the manager’s office like the night[-]cloth over Sister Angela’s canary cage, leaving each one to brood on his or her own thoughts. 1993, Carol Anne O’Marie, Murder Makes a Pilgrimage, Delacorte Press, →ISBN, page 201:
   • She tells me about the serving girl she had to scold for failing to remove the nightcloth from the songbirds’ cage (You see, I can be useful to you when you’re gone, she exclaims with a teasing smile and plucks a fishbone from my beard) and I provide her a fictitious account of my luncheon visit to a neighboring castellan to discuss proposed changes in the game laws. 1997, Epoch, volume 48, page 174:
   • In my dream last night I was a toucan / With a nose that was hard as a shell, / So I rapped knuckles on it, / Cracked walnuts upon it, / And cashews and filberts as well. / Yes, I cracked open walnuts upon it, / And used it to bang at my bell. / Yes, I ate walnut meat / While my two toucan feet / Took turns standing. The nightcloth then fell. 2001, Ethan Coen, “My Dream and What I Make of It”, in The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way, New York, N.Y.: Crown Publishers, →ISBN, page 34:
2. (rare) A nightgown.
   • She dressed him in a pair of knee-length trousers and a jacket, no underclothes, no shoes, and put on her own coat and hat above her nightcloth. […] His fingers—adept in crowds at unloosening, unfastening, unbuttoning—were trembling at the strings of the nightcloth which she still wore beneath her coat. […] One hand pulled her heavy coat and nightcloth to her waist; his other hand was pushed too tightly—and was trapped—beneath his trouser band, beneath his underclothes. 1992, Jim Crace, Arcadia, New York, N.Y.: Atheneum, →ISBN, pages 114 and 128:
   • (1895.) July 1, 1677.—Lady Mary Fletcher to her niece, Katherine Fleming. Pray tell your father that I omitted two suits of ribbon, a laced apron, and laced nightcloth, and a fan, all of which are necessaries as well as the smocks of which I said nothing. 1890, The Manuscripts of S. H. Le Fleming, Esq., of Rydal Hall (Historical Manuscripts Commission. Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part VII.), London: […] [F]or Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, by Eyre and Spottiswoode, […], page 138:
   • The public was particularly unappreciative of the 1808-1814 Classic Head type which presented “a sleepy-looking Liberty turbaned with a diaphanous nightcloth,” and promptly dubbed her the “Blowsy Barmaid.” 1978, Carl Allenbaugh, Coins: Questions and Answers, 3rd edition, Iola, Wis.: Krause Publications, →ISBN, page 42:
   • Witout^([sic]) taking time to dress, and with only a nightcloth around himself, this young lad appears to have rushed out of the city and across the Kidron Valley to the garden. […] When the arresting party grabbed this youth, he slipped out of the nightcloth and fled naked to his home within the walled city of Jerusalem. 1989, Rolland E. Wolfe, “The Accurate Easter Reporters”, in How the Easter Story Grew from Gospel to Gospel, Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.: The Edwin Mellen Press, →ISBN, page 13:

Forms

Relateds

nightclothes