linsey-woolsey

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a coarse, sturdy fabric woven with a linen or cotton warp and a woolen weft

   Several women at the meeting wore plain linsey-woolsey frocks.

2. 2
   adj

   made of linsey-woolsey or composed of an incongruous mixture

   The museum displayed a faded linsey-woolsey work dress from the 1840s.

3. 3
   noun

   archaic: a confused mixture, especially nonsensical or incoherent speech

   The critic dismissed the speech as rhetorical linsey-woolsey.

From Middle English forms combining linen with wool. The name describes a cloth made from unlike fibers; that mixture also prompted the older figurative sense 'mishmash' or 'nonsense.'

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