Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A finely woven white linen or cotton fabric.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A thin, fine linen, said to have been first manufactured at Cambrai in France, introduced in the sixteenth century for the fine ruffs worn at that period, as well as for bands, kerchiefs, etc.; in modern times, the finest linen made. See batiste.
  • noun Same as cambric-muslin, 2.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A fine, thin, and white fabric made of flax or linen.
  • noun A fabric made, in imitation of linen cambric, of fine, hardspun cotton, often with figures of various colors; -- also called cotton cambric, and cambric muslin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A finely-woven fabric made originally from linen but often now from cotton.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a finely woven white linen

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Obsolete Flemish kameryk, from Kameryk, Cambrai.]

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Examples

  • She wears a gown of rich silk, opening in front to display a chemisette of the most delicate cambric, which is scarcely less delicate than her skin.

    The Wits and Beaux of Society Volume 1 Philip Wharton 1847

  • After their coffee before the open fire -- she herself had had "cambric" coffee -- Peter smoked his cigar, while she curled up in silence in the twin to his big cushioned chair and sampled her chocolates.

    Turn About Eleanor F. Graham [Illustrator] Cootes

  • And, to wash it all down, he had a little blue cup of tea, "cambric" of course, quite as his mother would have wished.

    Half-Past Seven Stories Robert Gordon Anderson

  • The Strangers’ House is a fair and spacious house, built of brick, of somewhat a bluer colour than our brick; and with handsome windows, some of glass; some of a kind of cambric oiled.

    The New Atlantis: Paras 1-29 1909

  • She chose an apron of some fine stuff, such as cambric, and having so prepared the wax that it should be sufficiently soft to yield and spread with the warmth of the hand, she gave it a first rude shape by holding it in her hands and moulding it rudely with pressure applied at discretion, while, as a portrait-painter, she looked at the countenance and consulted the visage and features she would imitate.

    Documenting the American South: The Southern Experience in 19-th Century America 1860

  • The strangers 'house is a fair and spacious house, built of brick, of somewhat a bluer color than our brick; and with handsome windows, some of glass, some of a kind of cambric oiled.

    The New Atlantis 1626

  • The strangers 'house is a fair and spacious house, built of brick, of somewhat a bluer color than our brick; and with handsome windows, some of glass, some of a kind of cambric oiled.

    New Atlantis 1626

  • The strangers 'house is a fair and spacious house, built of brick, of somewhat a bluer colour than our brick; and with handsome windows, some of glass, some of a kind of cambric oiled.

    Ideal Commonwealths Tommaso Campanella 1603

  • The Strangers 'House is a fair and spacious house, built of brick, of somewhat a bluer colour than our brick; and with handsome windows, some of glass, some of a kind of cambric oiled.

    New Atlantis Francis Bacon 1593

  • The strangers’ house is a fair and spacious house, built of brick, of somewhat a bluer color than our brick; and with handsome windows, some of glass, some of a kind of cambric oiled.

    The New Atlantis 2002

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  • excerpt from Scarborough Fair/Canticle - Paul Simon/Art Garfunkel, 1966

    Tell her to make me a cambric shirt

    (On the side of a hill in the deep forest green)

    Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme

    (Tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground)

    Without no seams nor needlework

    (Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain)

    Then she'll be a true love of mine

    (Sleeps unaware of the clarion call)

    February 12, 2008

  • "VALERIA: You would be another Penelope; yet they say all the yarn she spun in Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths. Come; I would your cambric were sensible as your finger, that you might leave pricking it for pity."

    - William Shakespeare, 'The Tragedy of Coriolanus'.

    August 28, 2009