linsey-woolsey
Americannoun
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linsey-woolseys
plural
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a coarse fabric woven from linen warp, or sometimes cotton, and coarse wool filling.
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a garment made from this.
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Archaic. any mixture that is incongruous or of poor quality; jumble.
That last speech was a linsey-woolsey of stale platitudes.
noun
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a thin rough fabric of linen warp and coarse wool or cotton filling
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a strange nonsensical mixture or confusion
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of linsey-woolsey
1425–75; late Middle English lynsy wolsye literally, linen cloth, wool cloth, equivalent to lyn ( Old English līn; see linen) + -sy, variant of say cloth (< Old French saie; akin to Medieval Latin sagia kind of weave, Latin sagum cloak) + wol wool + -sye, variant of say
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The linsey-woolsey costumes looked as if they had just come out of attic trunks.
From Time Magazine Archive
They talk of the wives of pioneers making linsey-woolsey dresses and men chopping down trees, but they omit things like the Monroe Doctrine.
From Time Magazine Archive
John Calhoun, born to the cotton rows and the linsey-woolsey of a South Carolina frontier farm, became the greatest spokesman the slave-owning aristocracy ever had.
From Time Magazine Archive
Those skimpy sleeves did not even cover her elbows, and the scratchy linsey-woolsey cloth kept her thin shoulders constantly twitching.
From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare
He sat on the ground, his feet bare, his linsey-woolsey blouse veined with dirt, his dark face caked with mud.
From "The Fighting Ground" by Avi
"Every farm house," says Coman, the economic historian, "was a workshop where the women spun and wove the serges, kerseys, and linsey-woolseys which served for the common wear."
From History of the United States by Charles A. (Charles Austin) Beard
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