‖ grisette
(grɪˈzɛt)
Also 8 griset, grisset, grizette.
[a. F. grisette, f. gris grey: see -ette.]
1. An inferior grey dress fabric, formerly the common garb of working girls in France. (In quot. attrib.)
| 1700 T. Brown, etc. tr. Scarron's Com. Wks. (1712) 2 His Doublet was a Griset-Coat. |
2. A French girl or young woman of the working class,
esp. one employed as a shop assistant or a seamstress.
| 1723 Swift Stella at Wood-Park 59 She vows she will no longer stay In lodgings, like a poor grizette. a 1745 ― (title) To Betty the Grisette. 1768 Sterne Sent. Journ. (1775) II. 116 (Case Conscience), In a few minutes the Grisset came in with her box of lace. 1815 Sporting Mag. XLVI. 128 The women of Paris of all ranks, grisettes as well as Duchesses. 1885 M. E. Braddon Wyllard's Weird I. i. 23 That pretty, neat appearance which one sees in French girls of a class just a little above the grisette. |
| attrib. 1803 M. Charlton Wife & Mistr. IV. 29 A fellow..was scarcely able to vie with his valet-de-chambre in any expenditure upon his grisette adventures. 1844 L. S. Costello Béarn I. 335 The remarkable beauty of its young women of the grisette class. |
3. A noctuid moth,
Acronycta strigosa.
| 1869 Newman Brit. Moths 253 The Grisette. |