gabardine

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a firm, tightly woven fabric with a smooth face and a prominent diagonal twill, used especially for suits and coats

   The tailor cut the raincoat from a tightly woven wool gabardine.

2. 2
   noun

   a long loose outer garment or a garment made from gabardine

   The traveler wrapped his plain gabardine around him before stepping into the rain.

Modern gabardine altered the older gaberdine, a long outer garment, ultimately from a Romance word for a coarse cloak. In the early twentieth century the name became attached to a durable, steeply twilled fabric and then to clothes made from it.

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