smock
/smɒk
/- Big smocks, lacy cardigans and wide trousers were the backbone of a collection that carried echoes of high-school uniforms and American small-town culture.
- Mr Blair was wearing a black and blue T-shirt, jeans and training shoes, while his wife was dressed for the heat in multi-coloured patterned trousers, a white smock and trainers.
- His clothes were a blue smock that must have been designated for volunteers.
- Have the kids wear old clothes or provide large plastic bags with holes cut in the bottom and sides so they can slip over heads and arms for a protective smock.
- He wore a smock, gardening gloves, and a pair of half-moon glasses with a smudge of mud on them.
- Girls returning from the maize fields, in their red gowns, white smock-frocks, and yellow or red headkerchiefs, stroll through the meadows like moving flowers.
- There were no smock-frocks, even among the country folk; they retarded motion, and were apt to catch on machinery, and so the habit of wearing them had died out.
- Alberta Ferretti's romantic, smocked silk blouses and Greek maiden gowns were delightfully soft, as was Consuelo Castiglioni's Marni collection.
- Frozen solid in her smocked white dress, Dorothy realised she wasn't in Kansas anymore.
- Look in the pattern books for suitable patterns or see ‘Sources’ at the end of this article for companies selling a variety of patterns for children's smocked clothing.
Derivatives
smocked
Origin
Old English smoc 'woman's loose-fitting undergarment'; probably related to Old English smūgan 'to creep' and Old Norse smjúga 'put on a garment, creep into'.
In Old English smūgan meant ‘to creep’. Just as today we can talk about, say, wriggling into a pair of jeans or slipping into a dress, so the Anglo-Saxons used the word as a way of describing putting on a piece of clothing. This is why the related word smoc, which became smock, was applied to a woman's loose-fitting undergarment. It was not until the 19th century that the word was used for a piece of clothing worn by agricultural workers decorated with smocking, and only since the 20th that it has described a loose dress or blouse, or the loose garment that artists wear to keep their clothes clean.