Other forms: draped, drapes, draping
To drape is to hang cloth loosely over something. Drape a sheet over it, draped in black, drape the shoulders.
The looseness is the point — draped cloth falls in folds where fitted cloth does not, and how a fabric drapes is a technical property dressmakers judge by hand. As a noun, drapes is the American word for curtains.
1verbdrapeTo hang cloth loosely over something.
“She draped a shawl over her shoulders as the evening grew cool.”
drape is a hanging.
Old French draper means to make cloth, from drap, cloth, from Latin drappus. Drapery is the same root.
Proto-Germanic
*drapiz — a strike, hit, blow
Frankish
*drapi, *drāpi — that which is fulled, drabcloth
Latin
drappus
Old French
draper — to drape; to full cloth
Middle English
drape — a drape
English, today
drape
Built from
From Middle English drape (“a drape”), from Old French draper (“to drape; to full cloth”), from drap (“cloth, drabcloth”), from Latin drappus, drapus (“drabcloth, kerchief”), a word first recorded in the Capitularies of Charlemagne, probably from Frankish drapi, drāpi (“that which is fulled, drabcloth”) literally “that which is struck or for striking”, from Proto-Germanic drapiz (“a strike, hit, blow”) and Proto-Germanic drēpiz (“intended for striking, to be beaten”), both from drepaną (“to beat, strike”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰreb- (“to beat, crush, make or become thick”). Cognate with English drub (“to beat”), frr dreep (“a blow”), Low German drapen, dräpen (“to strike”), German treffen (“to meet”), Swedish dräpa (“to slay”). More at drub*.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA