crinoline

crinoline

a stiff fabric, originally of horsehair and linen used in lining garments

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

crinoline

[′krin·əl·ən]

(textiles)

A stiff fabric with an open weave that is filled with hard-twist cotton warp and horsehair.

A fabric with a firm starched or permanent resin finish.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Crinoline

 

an underskirt made of horsehair fabric, worn under a dress to give it a puffed, bell-shaped look. Crinolines originated among the wealthy in France in the 1840’s and quickly spread to other Western and Eastern European countries. In the mid-19th century, a wide skirt made of stiff fabric with sewn-in steel or whalebone hoops (width at the hem reached 6–8 m) was also called a crinoline. Crinolines went out of fashion by the 1870’s.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.