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corduroy

UK/ˈkɔːdəɹɔɪ/<a:RP>US/ˈkɔɹdəɹɔɪ/
nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,657 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: corduroys

Corduroy is thick cotton fabric with soft raised ridges running down it. Corduroy trousers, a corduroy jacket, fine-wale corduroy.

The ridges are called wales, and the fabric is graded by how many there are to the inch — fewer and wider for jumbo, many and fine for needlecord. It is hard-wearing and warm, which made it the working man's cloth long before it was a professor's.

Ludek · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of corduroy

  1. 1nouncorduroyThick cotton fabric with soft raised ridges.C1

    “He wore brown corduroy trousers that had gone smooth at the knees.”

corduroy is a fabric.

Where it comes from

The origin is unknown. The pretty story about French corde du roi, the king's cord, is not supported by any French use.

Built from

  • corde de soie · French — rope of silk or silk-like fabric
  • sergedusoy · English — silk serge

Origin unknown. Probably from cord + duroy. Probably not from French corde du roi (“cloth of the king”), which is unattested in French, where the term for the corduroy is velours côtelé. Possibly from cordesoy from corde de soie (“rope of silk or silk-like fabric”), named for example in a 1756 advertisement for clothing fabrics; see Wikipedia article, and comparable in language form to the contemporary sergedusoy (“silk serge”), see Serge (fabric).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Clothes & Fashion

Practise this word

corduroy in the wild

  • Eulophia, commonly known as corduroy orchids, is a genus of about two hundred species of flowering plants in the orchid family, Orchidaceae.

    Eulophia

  • Both velvet and corduroy derive from fustian fabric.

    Corduroy

  • A few corduroy road foundations that date back to the early 20th century still exist in North America.

    Corduroy road

  • In World War II corduroyed roads were used by both German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front.

    Corduroy road

  • The book is about the titular character, a sentient teddy bear, in a department store whose name refers to the corduroy outfit he is wearing.

    Corduroy (book)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.