pinafore
Americannoun
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a child's apron, usually large enough to cover the dress and sometimes trimmed with flounces.
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a woman's sleeveless garment derived from it, low-necked, tying or buttoning in the back, and worn as an apron or as a dress, usually over a blouse, a sweater, or another dress.
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Chiefly British.
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a large apron worn by adults.
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a sleeveless smock.
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noun
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an apron, esp one with a bib
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short for pinafore dress
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an overdress buttoning at the back
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pinafore
Explanation
A little girl in a British novel might wear a pinafore — a white, apron-like garment worn over a dress — but you probably won't see pinafores on the runways. The word pinafore, designating a sleeveless child's dress worn over other clothing, has moved on from its original meaning, which can still be seen lurking in the word itself. It was originally a protective apron "pinned afore," or over, one's clothes. These days, a pinafore is primarily worn by a young girl, and in Britain it's called a pinny for short.
Vocabulary lists containing pinafore
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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:
On one trip, then 6-year-old Bridget won a Laura look-alike contest in a handmade pinafore and bonnet sewn by her grandmother.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
“I love the scale of the check. I thought it harked back to the original pinafore she wore in the first ‘Beetlejuice,’” says Atwood.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 24, 2024
On the night she died, she had dressed up in a frilly blouse and pinafore dress.
From BBC ● Dec. 17, 2022
It looked like old lady clothes, but also the pinafore type of things.
From New York Times ● May 4, 2022
I put on my cleanest dress and the pinafore, which I hung on a branch by the side of the house to dry after we did the washing on Sunday.
From "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline
In photos I saw when she was a kid and I was a kid, she looked like one of us, in pinafores and high pigtails, or Benetton sweaters and frizzy hair.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 13, 2023
We met her surrounded by piles of jumpers, pinafores and donated warm coats.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2022
Gingham and prints of island life added girlish charm to the relaxed shapes, which included pieces like pinafores, low-slung shorts and men's style shirts.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 15, 2012
The white pinafores the little girls were wearing almost glowed, reminding me, for just a moment, of the real Céline shirt.
From New York Times ● Oct. 13, 2010
Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
