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tunic

UK/ˈtjuːnɪk/US/ˈtjuːnɪk/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,360 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: tunics

A tunic is a loose garment reaching to the knees. A linen tunic, wear a tunic, a military tunic.

It was the basic garment of the ancient world for everybody, belted at the waist and worn under a cloak. The word now covers a nurse's top, a school dress and the close-fitting jacket of a dress uniform, which have little in common but the name.

Coptic Byzantine · Public domain

Definitions of tunic

  1. 1nountunicA loose garment reaching to the knees.B2+

    “The actors in the Roman play wore simple white tunics and sandals.”

tunic is a garment.

Where it comes from

Latin tunica names the garment, probably from a Semitic word for a linen cloth or coat.

  1. Latin

    tunica

  2. Middle French

    tunique

  3. English, today

    tunic

Borrowed from Middle French tunique, from Latin tunica, possibly from sem - (compare arc, Hebrew כותנת (“coat”), chiton); or from ett -. Existed in Old English - as tunece; unknown if that term was lost and then reborrowed later. a doublet of tunica.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

tunic in the wild

  • In the West, the suit is more commonly known as the "Mao suit" or "Mao tunic" due to Chairman Mao Zedong's open fondness for the style.

    Mao suit

  • Mao's cut of the suit was a modified style designed in 1956 with influence from the Stalin tunic, which was prevalent among Soviet officials at the time.

    Mao suit

  • A tunic is a garment for the torso, usually simple in style, reaching from the shoulders to a length somewhere between the hips and the ankles.

    Tunic

  • The color of the tunic varied, but red (especially crimson) was increasingly the standard color preferred by hoplites during and after the Peloponnesian War.

    Exomis

  • Edward's Crown, worn on the shoulder straps of the Service Dress tunic.

    General (Canada)

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.