Last month’s column on words related to fabrics received two kinds of responses. A typical e-mail was from reader Valentina Trivedi who admitted that “words like Poplin and Voile were such an intrinsic part of my mother’s vocabulary that I never thought of them as language imports....” Others wanted to know the etymology of fabric names such as mulmul, khadi, lustalin, tussoor and corduroy, etc.
Etymology of machine-made cloth brought to India by British, French and Portuguese traders is relatively easy to find than the traditional Indian weavings such as mulmul, khadi (khaddar) and tusoor.
Tussoor — tusser in English — is a medium weight wild silk spun and woven with short threads as opposed to cultivated silks (made from the farming of silkworms), which have a smooth continuous filament of silk that is reeled by hand. Perhaps some reader will come to my aid and throw light on the origins of mulmul, khadi and tusser.
Language imports
Although most fabric names are ‘language imports’ into Indian languages, several words about fabrics from India have made into the English vocabulary. Calicut, located on the Malabar Coast, was an important port in trade between India and the Arab world. It was called Qualiqut in Arabic, Collicuthia in Medieval Latin and Qualecut/Calecut in Portuguese. However, the pronunciation of the French form, Calicot, influenced the term ‘calico’ for the textile traded through Calicut.
Cashmere, a highly-prized material woven from the wool obtained from long-haired goats, is an Anglicisation of Kashmir, from Sanskrit Kashypamara meaning “home of Kashyap”, the renowned sage. Madras is a type of bright-coloured muslin cloth first exported from the port now known as Chennai.
‘Chheent’ (Hindi for spraying or sprinkling) spawned Chintz, the name for a smooth, inexpensive cotton cloth that is printed with a flowery pattern and is used for making curtains and furniture covers. Samuel Pepys noted in his diary in 1663: “…Bought my wife a chint that is, a painted Indian calico, for her to line her new study”.
Chintzy for ‘something cheap and low quality’ and ‘somebody not willing to spend money’, was first recorded in 1851 by George Eliot. Kipling recorded in 1891 trousers made from ‘dungari,’ Hindi for a fabric. Dungarees later came to denote work clothes made from a tough material.
Probably more varieties of fabrics made from wool are available in Indian shops than any other material except cotton. The modern spelling came from Old English wull, which in turn was influenced by wol (Dutch), woll (German) and a few other North European languages. In Romance languages, Latin lana (wool) is the root for lana (Italian) and laine (French) as well as for the French surname Lanier, which means “wool-monger”.
In a school that I once attended, we wore suits made from grey flannel. The 1956 movie “The Man in The Grey Flannel Suit” starring Gregory Peck discusses the suit as a sign of respectability and de rigueur for businessmen and executives. For decades, Indian stores have sold this fabric whose name in all likelihood came from Welsh gwalanen (woollen article). Another popular woollen fabric is serge (from Greek serica) meaning “cloth of wool mixed with silk or linen”.
Interesting history
Gabardine, closely woven cotton or wool twill commonly used for school uniforms because it is sturdy and long-lasting, has a more interesting etymological history. The fabric’s name is a direct descendent of French gauvardine, meaning ‘a long, coarse cloak or frock’ worn especially by Jews during the Middle Ages and also ‘a pilgrim’s cloak’. The French term evolved out of Spanish gabardina. Its meaning as an outer garment was gradually lost, and gabardine came to mean by 1904 simply ‘fine worsted cloth’.
Advertisements for suit cloth in India often use the term worsted, after the fabric made from twisted yarn first in 1926 in Worstead, a town in Norfolk, England. Felt, another word commonly heard in India, has its root in the Germanic feltaz meaning ‘something beaten’. The name is no surprise because felt is thick soft material made of wool, hair or fur that has been ‘beaten’ or pressed flat. Felt is also a verb: ‘felt a cap’ means cover with felt. Filter also evolved from filtrum, Middle Latin for felt, which was used to strain impurities from liquid. The first cigarette filter was made in 1908.
Since 1862 shoddy has meant a cheap imitation or something of inferior quality as in ‘shoddy workmanship’. But the word was first used in 1832 to mean ‘wool made of woollen waste, old rags’ and ‘cloth of reused wool”. The disapproving connotation was, no doubt, because of the use of old rags and cheap wool, and influenced the figurative use of the term wool: woolgathering means ‘indulging in wandering fancies and purposeless thinking’, from the lit. meaning ‘gathering fragments of wool torn from sheep by bushes, etc.’ Pull the wool over somebody’s eyes is ‘to deceive someone by not telling the truth’. A black sheep means “a disfavoured or disreputable member of a group”, figurative sense supposedly because a real black sheep had wool that could not be dyed and was thus worthless.
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