Definitions

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

  • noun A heavy unglazed cotton, linen, or rayon fabric, colorfully printed and used for draperies and slipcovers.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A cotton cloth with various textures of surface, printed on one side with patterns, usually in colors, and used for curtains, covering furniture, etc.

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

  • noun A strong white fabric with warp of hemp and weft of flax.
  • noun A fabric with cotton warp and woolen weft.
  • noun A kind of chintz with a glossy surface.

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

  • noun A strong, heavy fabric of cotton, linen or rayon, used to make curtains and upholstery.

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

  • noun an unglazed heavy fabric; brightly printed; used for slipcovers and draperies

Etymologies

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

[After Creton, a village of northwest France.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Creton, a village in Normandy.

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Examples

  • And see here, Pa, "stooping to pick up a piece of cretonne from the rubbish on the floor –" this has been a paper holder – there's beads sewed on it around the flowers; and do you see yon little shelf?

    The Second Chance 1910

  • A mean window with a dingy cretonne curtain, a single bed still made-up with sheets and blankets but with the counterpane pulled taut over the single lumpy pillow; books lining two walls; a small bedside table with a shoddy lamp; a Bible; a cumber - some and gaudily decorated china ashtray bearing an advertisement for beer.

    She Closed Her Eyes 2010

  • The faded cretonne curtains faintly patterned with overblown roses and daffodils unseasonably intertwined were pulled back to show an inland view of the far Pur-beck hills.

    She Closed Her Eyes 2010

  • “Delight Higgins,” Slyly Silas said as he pushed aside the dusty yellow cretonne curtain that separated his business from his house and entered the office.

    City of Glory Beverly Swerling 2007

  • “Delight Higgins,” Slyly Silas said as he pushed aside the dusty yellow cretonne curtain that separated his business from his house and entered the office.

    City of Glory Beverly Swerling 2007

  • She noted with tenderness all the makeshifts: the darned chair-arms, the patent rocker covered with sleazy cretonne, the pasted strips of paper mending the birch-bark napkin-rings labeled “Papa” and

    Main Street 2004

  • I love you more than all the flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino, tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill in the whole Cloth Hall of the world.

    languagehat.com: W.G. SEBALD. 2004

  • About her was the clothy exuberance of a Blodgett College room: cretonne-covered window-seat, photographs of girls, a carbon print of the Coliseum,

    Main Street 2004

  • She stored the bed in the attic; replaced it by a cot which, with a denim cover, made a couch by day; put in a dressing-table, a rocker transformed by a cretonne cover; had Miles

    Main Street 2004

  • The hangings were of Rouen cretonne imitating old Normandy chintz, and the Louis XV. design — a shepherdess, in a medallion held in the beaks of a pair of doves — gave the walls, curtains, bed, and arm-chairs a festive, rustic style that was extremely pretty!

    Pierre And Jean 2003

Comments

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  • The chameleon's life is confusing;

    He is used to adventure and pain;

    But if he ever sat on Aunt Maggie's cretonne

    And found what curious colour he'd gone,

    I don't think he'd do it again.

    - A. P. Herbert, 'The Chameleon'.

    November 8, 2008

  • A form of fire approaches the cretonnes of Penelope,

    Whose mere savage presence awakens the world in which she dwells.

    Wallace Stevens, "The World as Meditation"

    December 5, 2010