out of whole cloth

Idioms  

1. From pure fabrication or fiction. This expression is often put as cut (or made) out of whole cloth, as in That story was cut out of whole cloth. In the 15th century this expression referred to something fabricated from cloth that ran the full length of the loom. However, by the 1800s it was common practice for tailors to deceive their customers and, instead of using whole cloth, actually make garments from pieced goods. Their advertising slogan, “cut out of whole cloth,” thus came to mean “made up, false.”

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Example Sentences

“She made them up out of whole cloth in order to impute intentional wrongdoing to Plaintiff,” the lawyers wrote.

From Washington Times

On Friday, Thomas said the Supreme Court had invented the actual malice rule out of whole cloth.

From Seattle Times

But such an expansion will be neither easy to pull off nor without consequence across the worlds of film and television, as unwinding existing deals is legally and logistically thorny, and building new franchises out of whole cloth traditionally a matter of experience and luck more than desire or money.

From Washington Post

And because the show was using motion-capture with real actors, it meant that the actors sitting in their bedrooms needed to perform with their faces and bodies too; this wasn’t a talking giraffe or flying squirrel that animators could just invent out of whole cloth.

From Washington Post

Roughly 10 percent each were fibs made out of whole cloth, attacks on people he considered foes, falsehoods about the coronavirus, phony claims about the election, or false statements about Biden and his proposals.

From Washington Post