Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A strong and coarse linen cloth, used, until the introduction of machine-woven cotton cloth, for purposes not requiring fine linen. Yorkshire and the south of Scotland were the chief places of its manufacture during the eighteenth century.
- noun In modern use, a coarse cotton fabric made to imitate the linen cloth of the same name.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A coarse linen cloth made in the north of England and in Scotland, now nearly replaced by calico.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
coarse linen cloth made in the north of England and in Scotland, later replaced bycalico .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Material for making garments included linen of several grades, blue linen for facing doublets, dowlas, canvas for sheets and shirts.
Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century Annie Lash Jester
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He had a strong common sense, like that which Rose Flammock, the weaver's daughter, in Scott's romance, commends in her father, as resembling a yardstick, which, whilst it measures dowlas and diaper, can equally well measure tapestry and cloth of gold.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862 Various
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The net for this should be made of strong wire in the shape of the net at Fig. 46, or 43, if without the joints, a bag of strong dowlas and a stick are attached, and the front square-ended part is pushed by the collector through the grass, in order to trap any low feeding or invisible insects.
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In the outer room, apparently a storeroom, there was, in accordance with the practice of planters to keep a supply of materials on hand, a quantity of piece-goods in dowlas, lockram, dimity, coarse Holland, fine Holland and tufted Holland, osnaburg and kersey, and seventeen ells (45 inches in English measure and 27 inches in Dutch measure) of sheeting, as well as yarn stockings.
Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century Annie Lash Jester
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Dowlas, filthy dowlas: I have given them away to bakers wives, and they have made bolters of them.
Act III. Scene III. The First Part of King Henry the Fourth 1914
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I went with the throng, jostled alike by velvet and dowlas, by youths with their estates upon their backs and naked fantastically painted savages, and trampling the tobacco with which the greedy citizens had planted the very street.
To Have and to Hold Mary Johnston 1903
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You can swear that you did n't know her to be of finer weave than dowlas.
To Have and to Hold Mary Johnston 1903
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One with a shirt of coarsest dowlas, and a filthy rag tying up a broken head, yet wore velvet breeches, and wiped the sweat from his face with a wrought handkerchief; the other topped a suit of shreds and patches with a fine bushy ruff, and swung from one ragged shoulder a cloak of grogram lined with taffeta.
To Have and to Hold Mary Johnston 1903
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He was a tall man, with hair that was more red than brown, and he was dressed in a shirt of dowlas, leather breeches, and coarse plantation-made shoes and stockings.
Audrey Mary Johnston 1903
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At a long, low table stood Mistress Betty Carrington, her slender figure enveloped in an apron of blue dowlas, her sleeves of fine holland rolled above her elbows, and her white and rounded arms plunged deep into a great bowl filled with the purple globes of the wild grape.
Prisoners of Hope A Tale of Colonial Virginia Mary Johnston 1903
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