Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A garment consisting of a rectangular piece of printed cloth worn especially in Polynesia by men and women as a wraparound skirt.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal The Sarong Skirt: Pair a pareu with a chunky knit top The Sarong Skirt Layer an acid-color pareu under a chunky knit top with opaque tights and a funky sandal.
Endless Summer 2012
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Set to a soundtrack of pounding tribal drums, Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez's spring show was a veritable luau of pareu skirts, hibiscus blooms and tiki imagery.
Endless Summer 2012
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With a flower behind her ear and wearing a pareu, Puamana left for the Kahala with Sparky Lemmo.
Beard 2010
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It made me more attentive to Buddy, who had tucked his towel together like a pareu and was entering his house, followed by the pretty girl.
Beard 2010
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The structure was a smooth, slick curve of solid muscle that arced back to vanish beneath the almost hidden waistband of the pareu.
Cachalot Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 1980
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Following them, her gaze was intercepted by the sight of Sam standing alone up in the enclosed bridge, his huge shoulders blocking out any view of the overhead instruments, pareu rippling in the slight breeze, eyes straight ahead.
Cachalot Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 1980
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The next instant there stepped out of the opening a tall, shock-haired young man, naked, except for some tatters of an undershirt and a piece of old canvas wound about his hips after the fashion of a South Sea _pareu_.
Where the Sun Swings North Barrett Willoughby
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A second stoutly maintained our earthly origin, and attributed our paleness to the influence of some strange sickness; while a third, being of a sceptical and suspicious turn of mind, suddenly seized Barton by the wrist and spitting upon the skirt of her pareu, commenced scrubbing his hand with great vigour, to see whether the colours were fast.
The Island Home Richard Archer
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Red Chicken, in a scarlet pareu fastened tightly about his loins, stood at the prow when we had reached his favorite spot off a point of land, while I, with a paddle, 10 noiselessly kept the canoe as stationary as possible.
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I made a tourniquet of a strip of my pareu and, with a small harpoon, 30 twisted it until the flow of blood was stopped.
knitandpurl commented on the word pareu
"The display of practically naked bodies, hips wrapped in skimpy pareus, reproduces the rhetoric of the Tunis brothel."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 47 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011