Geneva gown

American  

noun

1. a loose, large-sleeved, black preaching gown worn by members of the Protestant clergy: so named from its use by the Calvinist clergy of Geneva, Switzerland.

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Geneva gown British  

noun

1. a long loose black gown with very wide sleeves worn by academics or Protestant clerics

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Etymology

Origin of Geneva gown

First recorded in 1810–20

Example Sentences

From the fast-gathering mists that now threaten those receding years, surviving ones still rescue images of the precentor's ruffled locks, swept by the pentecostal swirl—so seemed it to his worshippers—of Dr. Grant's Geneva gown.

From St. Cuthbert's by Knowles, Robert E.

When my father saw me in a Geneva gown, his eyes were filled with tears.

From From the Bottom Up The Life Story of Alexander Irvine by Irvine, Alexander

It was a monarchy under the Geneva gown.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 by Various

So with the directions as to vestments—whether they are the Eucharistic vestments, ordered by the "Ornaments Rubric," or the preacher's Geneva gown not ordered anywhere.

From The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments by Holmes, E. E.

I have a vague recollection of one Vicar of Stoneleigh still preaching in the black silk Geneva gown.

From Fifty-One Years of Victorian Life by Child-Villiers, Margaret Elizabeth Leigh