lutestring2
(ˈl(j)uːtstrɪŋ)
[App. an alteration of lustring (which, however, appears later in our quots.), assimilated to prec.]
A kind of glossy silk fabric; a dress or a ribbon of this material.
1661 Pepys Diary 18 Feb., We went to a mercer's..and there she bought a suit of Lutestring for herself. 1686 Lond. Gaz. No. 2126/4 To be sold..a parcel of very good black narrow Lute-Strings, and Alamode-Silks. 1704 Pope Lett. (1736) V. 124 Think of flouncing the petticoat so very deep, that it looks like an entire coat of lute-string! 1767 Woman of Fashion I. 78 She was dressed in a flowing Negligee of white Lutestring. 1799 G. Smith Laboratory II. 46 To draw a pattern for a silver brocade lutestring. 1856 Mrs. Browning Aur. Leigh vi. 715 As if you had..held your trailing lutestring up yourself. 1887 Macm. Mag. LV. 108 A suit of white lutestring trimmed with large bunches of acorns. |
† b. to speak in lutestring: (meaning uncertain).
The phrase ‘which I met with in the course of my reading’ is several times derisively quoted by Junius as used by the Duke of Grafton. Cf. quot. a 1797 in c.
1771 Junius Lett. xlviii. 250, I was led to trouble you with these observations by a passage, which, to speak in lutestring, I met with this morning in the course of my reading. |
c. attrib.
1759 Compl. Lett.-writer (ed. 6) 222 Dressed in a white lutestring gown and petticoat. 1768 C'tess Cowper Let. to Mrs. Delany in Mrs. D.'s Life & Corr. Ser. ii. I. 186 Lord Spencer had a pale blue lutestring domino. a 1797 H. Walpole Mem. Geo. III (1845) I. xiv. 210 He [Chas. Townshend] had said of the last arrangement before Fox was set at the head, that it was a pretty lutestring administration which would do very well for summer wear. |